Last summer (2020) the city of Seattle started looking at the best route from the Jose Rizal bridge through North Beacon Hill. This is a much needed upgrade to the paint-only lane (one-way lanes) on 14th and 15th that cannot be considered “All Ages and Abilities”. They put up signs everywhere asking for people to give their feedback. They had an online presentation and people asked questions and gave feedback. I also saw SDOT give the presentation at the online Bike Advisory Board Meeting. Tom at the Seattle Bike Blog wrote about it here in August of 2020.
There are 3 options to get to North Beacon Hill. 12th/13 Ave, 14th Ave or 15th Ave. 12th/13th and 14th are a lot steeper than 15th. 12th/13th and 14th also have the 36 and 60 bus routes on them which creates a few complications with building bike lanes. It’s not impossible but it is so much easier to not have to create bus islands around protected bike lanes. The response that the city from cyclists was to put them on 15th Ave. I thought it was not even a question that it was a clear winner. Construction was slated for 2023 and they were supposed to make a route decision and then start design. I hadn’t heard anything about the project until signs went up online and in the neighborhood about a couple of community outreach meetings about the project in July
I was excited!!! I assumed they were going to show us a 30% design and we could see what it would look like. I’m really curious to see if they are going to make a 2 way bike lane on one side of the street or try to make lanes on both sides of the street. So I was at the Beacon Hill Playground at 4pm on Tuesday to check out their latest presentation.
Disappointment…. It was the same drawings we saw last summer. They still haven’t made a route decision or started design. I don’t know what they did for a whole year….
Talking to the project manager, she said they are felt that they didn’t a good response about parking removal from the last outreach. It was during the pandemic and maybe the people that live on the street didn’t get a good chance to give their feedback about a putting a bike lane where the street parking is. I get it. They probably mostly heard from bikers last year. It is best to make sure that the eventual outrage of removal of parking happens before the design is complete. I was frustrated with SDOT but I can see where they are coming from.
So, I am trying to take another look at this from a parking point of view. Each of the routes has a lot of houses being removed and replaced with townhomes. Parking could get tough but right now most people can still park within a block or 2 of their home. The Pacific Tower apartment project is still planned for North of the hospital which is going to affect parking. 15th does have bike lanes Southbound already and 14th has them Northbound but those are both in car door danger areas. I don’t think any of the route options have an advantage or disadvantage when talking about parking removal.
They told me the plan was to have a route decision by November and then start the design this winter. The project shouldn’t be delayed by their year of inaction. I think part of the lack of progress might be tied to paving projects. The city is very tight lipped lately when talking about which streets will be repaved next. They used to show their 6 year plan on the website but that hasn’t been updated in many years. All 3 of these streets are getting really really bad and must be on their list to be repaved in the next couple of years. So, they are going to install the protected bike lanes when they repave like they have been doing in several other parts of the city in the past few years. I’m OK with that and I am still excited to see the design. There are a LOT of bikers on Beacon Hill and most of them will use this route. This is a big part of getting an All Ages bike route to my favorite neighborhood.