If you are biking between Tukwila/Kent/Auburn and Georgetown/Sodo/Beacon Hill then the most direct route would be to ride along Airport Way. Airport Way is currently used by a lot of drivers as an alternative when traffic is bad on I5 and they often drive pretty fast. Many bikers do use this route though and it is included as part of our Seattle Master Bike Plan to eventually put protected bike lanes here, although I have yet to find any plans for design or funding for construction. It seems the city’s focus now is on East Marginal Way and a South Park to Georgetown connection or to continue on to the West Seattle Bridge. For about half of the length of the airport, most cyclists ride on Perimeter Road which has a limit of 20mph. It is a lot more comfortable than the Southern section where you need to ride on the edge of a stroad that often has cars moving at freeway speeds. But many of us still rode this route and some continue to ride on it.
In August of 2020 they put up fences and closed a block of perimeter road between Portland St and near Othello street. I did a little googling, couldn’t find out why this was happening, so I emailed a bunch of people I found on the website of King County Airport. The Manager of Operations and Compliance replied and notified me that UPS expanded and they have leased the section of road to them.
So this is permanent and the fences are still across the road.
No more public access on this formerly public road
So how did this happen without any apparent public communication? Why would the city allow this? Did they even know about it? Was the Seattle Bike Advisory board aware? I emailed a bunch of people although I didn’t get many answers. Tom from the Seattle Bike Blog found a traffic impact study that acknowledges that this is a part of the Seattle Bike master plan. But the data in the study didn’t show many bike users. Maybe that is because they haven’t build the protected bike lanes yet…
I did think an option would be to ride the sidewalk for a little detour. The airport operations manager offered to cut down some of the blackberries to make it usable. I just rode it again yesterday and it still isn’t really usable.
I started riding on the sidewalk of East Marginal Way on the other side of the airport for my commute home from Kent to Beacon Hill. I liked it much better and I’m not sure why I ever rode on Airport Way. East Marginal is a bit longer.. but the sidewalk is wide, isn’t used much, and doesn’t cross too many side streets or driveways. This year they started construction on a new logistics yard at the South end of the airport, so I again had to shift my Northbound commute route. I started continuing on the Green River Trail through Cecil Moses Park to South Park, and then over the South Park Bridge back to East Marginal Way. It is a little further again, but I am enjoying my commute a lot more (see my recent post) and I don’t see ever switching back to Airport or the East Marginal Way sidewalk.
But this whole thing still bothers me…
First, I didn’t see the communication from the airport to the biking community. It might have been to the city but I don’t know about it. Not sure if our bike advisory board knew. I don’t think a lot of us that follow bike improvements were aware at all.
Second, it seems wrong for a public agency to lease a public road to a private company at the expense of public safety.
Third, they didn’t think to provide an alternative for bikes or pedestrians even though it wouldn’t take much to cut down some plants and repave a sidewalk.
Fourth, sometimes it feels like the bike community really gets upset when government does stupid stuff within the city, but when issues come up for South King County, they are ignored. A lot has been written about the Rainier Valley getting left out of improvements and the rich communities getting the good stuff. The lower income section of our county is moving South of the city. We need to focus on getting bike facilities that connect there as well. Even though some people don’t live in Seattle, we need to focus on allowing them to come safely to work or play in the city. How can we get our “Seattle bike lobby” to focus on the whole region? Not sure why, when I pointed out this issue to people in the bike community, there was crickets.