Key Seattle bikeway connects more than its 600 feet suggest

The old mingles with the new at the intersection of Yesler Way and First Avenue in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood.

Lime scooters zip by the pergola that once sheltered passengers waiting for cable cars heading up Yesler and James Street. Sentries of older eras - the Pioneer Building and Smith Tower - stand tall. Just not as tall as the glassy, 1980s-era Columbia Center rising behind them.

And, now, bicyclists wait in the city's newest bike lane at a traffic signal erected during World War II.

The Yesler bikeway is the latest example of the city push to get people out of cars and onto bikes, part of its work to help stop traffic congestion and deaths, fight climate change and make Seattle a better place to live.

But building a bikeway on Yesler, one of Seattle's oldest streets in its oldest neighborhood, wasn't easy. Vestiges of yesteryear had to be preserved, like those traffic signals. And Pioneer Square's subterranean tunnels make great tourist draws, but complicate roadwork.

The bikeway, opened between Western and Occidental avenues last month in part to prepare for this summer's FIFA Men's World Cup crowds, is described as the final puzzle piece connecting the waterfront bike path to the Fourth and Second Avenue bike lanes, spines of the city center bike network.

With its completion, bicyclists can ride, comfortably and safely, from nearly any corner of downtown to points well beyond.

This is really a great project that closes a gap in the transportation network," said Jim Curtin, the Seattle Department of Transportation's project development division director.

Curtin pointed to the Yesler bikeway's proximity to the ferry terminal, a light rail station and numerous bus stops, as well as its nexus with the bike network, as proof of its value. But he also noted how close the stadiums are to it.

"We really need people to get to the (World Cup) matches using transit," he said. The city's goal is to have 80% of people arrive to a match without using a car. Six matches, attended by an estimated 750,000 people, will be played at Lumen Field between June 15 and July 6.

The $400,000 Yesler bike project is just one of the many things SDOT is doing to ease the crush on match days. Other work includes closing most of Pioneer Square's streets to cars and making the area a "pedestrian zone" when a game is being played, and finishing the protected bike lane on Fourth to connect the Space Needle to Lumen Field.

The link to the waterfront on Yesler was particularly important, Curtin said. The bike lane's relatively short span of 600 feet doesn't speak to its key role in the network, or the knotty issues SDOT faced building it.

Andrew Scales, a civil engineer with SDOT, led the effort to make the traffic signals amenable to cars, pedestrians and bicyclists, and to convert them to "all walk," stopping all directions of traffic at red lights while allowing pedestrians to cross at the same time.

The city worked with the Alliance for Pioneer Square to make the intersection at Yesler and First safer.

Though the conduits running through the catacombs - what the city calls "areaways" - were updated, there was no option to add a bike signal. The old signals couldn't bear any more weight.

"It's a classic problem of trying to do new things in an area with really historic infrastructure," said Matt Beaulieu, SDOT's transportation operations division deputy director.

Another issue with the subterranean spaces is that they also act as retaining walls for the street.

The web of underground sidewalks and catacombs is a result of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. After the neighborhood was destroyed by the blaze, city planners decided to raise the flood-prone area by one to two stories. Though some formerly ground-floor businesses stayed open for a while, the ways down were eventually sealed off to the public.

At the same time, streets were raised, and built on fill dirt. The walls between the street foundation and underground walkways are load-bearing and literally hold up the street to this day, adding an extra complication to any roadwork above. Including for a bike lane.

"For all of our work on these streets, areaways are something we think about," Beaulieu said.

Weakest link

Gordon Padelford is executive director of the Seattle Streets Alliance, formerly the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

Padelford and his group - along with Cascade Bicycle Club - advocated for this connection since the first days of the downtown network, which began with a pilot protected bike lane on Second Avenue in 2014.

"It's a vital connection," Padelford said of the new bikeway on a recent sunny lunch hour at Yesler and First, where he'd occasionally pull his phone out to photograph the steady stream of people on wheels using the bike lane. "A network is only as strong as its weakest link."

Padelford likened that idea to a freeway offramp that ends at a barricade, or the frustration of trying to use Sound Transit's light rail system to get to the Eastside before the 2 Line crossed Lake Washington.

"Suddenly, people can just get more places," he said.

Yesler was that weakest link, but now others have taken its spot. Getting through Chinatown International District, for instance, is not safe, intuitive or direct - markers of a good transportation system, bike or otherwise. There's no east-west route through South Lake Union. Seattle Center has some random stubs of bike lanes.

Yet even with solid bike connections, complications arise. As Padelford spoke, an SUV slowly drove down the Yesler bike lane. He took another photo, noticed the Alaska plates and remarked how confusing it is to reach the ferry terminal by car.

Regardless, Padelford was largely positive about Seattle's progress, and said Mayor Katie Wilson - who filmed a video with SDOT marking the Yesler lane out with paint - was a champion for bikes who he said would keep the work moving.

"It wasn't that long ago that there weren't any protected bike lanes downtown. The bike network is better than it's ever been in Seattle," he said. "If people haven't ridden downtown recently, I encourage everyone to try it again.

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