Riding southbound along East Marginal Way S – see the refreshed bike lane on the right!
We made efficient, essential improvements to make people biking safer and more predictable to drivers in both directions along East Marginal Way S between Spokane St and S Atlantic St.
As we make progress on our long-term projects – such as the East Marginal Way S Corridor Improvement Project – we continue to make immediate improvements to mitigate the impact of the West Seattle High-Rise Bridge closure on you and your neighbors and make it safer and easier for everyone walking, biking, and driving to get around.
- These changes help us all reach our Reconnect West Seattle mode-shift goals.
- With support from us and our transportation partners, we are looking to people in and around West Seattle to – within their means – consider changing how they travel when it is safe to return to typical travel habits.
- One way we support this is by making it easier and safer to ride bikes. Our collective goal for how people get around in 2021 during peak commute hours includes an additional 940 people switching from driving to riding bikes.
On East Marginal Way S, we refreshed bike lane and driveway markings and replaced Tuff Posts along the bike lanes – both northbound and southbound.
These important improvements are along 1.3 miles of bike lanes between Spokane St and S Atlantic St.
“This protected bike lane serves as an important connection between West Seattle and downtown. While we plan for larger improvements along East Marginal Way S, pursuing interim improvements for this protected bike lane made sense right away.”
Venu Nemani, Traffic Operations Supervisor
Here’s what we did over the past few weeks:
We refreshed the bike lane and driveway markings, which make people biking more visible and predictable to drivers.
A driveway marking is a safety element that alerts both people driving and biking to the “conflict zone” – the overlap between the bike lane and the driveway path.
We replaced the Tuff Posts in the buffer area between the bike lane and driving lane. These flexible, durable posts visibly separate bicycles and drivers on the street, and have reflective marking that is visible at night.
We plan to come back to this area with more safety improvements in the future.
We’re currently designing plans for the East Marginal Way Corridor Improvements in the coming years. These designs include a 2-way protected bike lane on the east side of the street between S Atlantic St and S Spokane St, with a physical barrier to separate people on bikes from cars and trucks. The physical barrier is most often a concrete divider, but sometimes a landscaping strip. We’re currently gathering feedback about this project, and you can take an online survey through September 14.
We’re listening to you, bike community! By making bike lanes more visible and protected along these important connection routes, we’re helping to make biking a viable transportation option and reduce travel by car.
- We are using the results of the Reconnect West Seattle Survey – thank you to the over 17,000 of you who filled it out! – to learn and plan for what you need to help you shift your travel patterns.
- As part of this, our Bike Network Prioritization Process aims to fill gaps in our existing bike network in West Seattle so more people feel safe and empowered to bike commute, if able.
- This process enables the bike community to lead and prioritize projects to best mitigate the impacts of the bridge closure and detour routes.
Especially now, people who live, work, and visit Seattle need safe, healthy, and affordable options to get around. These refreshed protected bike lanes join our other recent protected bike lane projects (like the new 4th Ave protected bike lane!) to help people travel safely and efficiently while we make progress to repair or replace the West Seattle Bridge.