Seattle Bicycle Weekends expands as the city slows lakeside traffic

When John Charles Olmsted came to Seattle in spring 1903 to plot out a grand municipal plan for parks and parkways, he explored the city by streetcar, foot and boat. He didn't touch a bicycle or automobile.

More than a century later, Olmsted's vision holds firm - in the 37 parks and playgrounds that still exist, and the boulevards meant to connect them all in an emerald necklace.

But his insistence that all residents of Seattle promenade or rest" on Lake Washington Boulevard "with the fullest enjoyment of the lake and mountain scenery" is being tested on a 3-mile stretch of the parkway. The city recently built 23 speed cushions there to try to slow drivers down on an arterial road busy with commuters. And beginning this weekend - and for every summer weekend through Labor Day - legions of bicyclists and pedestrians will have sole access to the road as part of Bicycle Weekends.

What some will surely call the latest onslaught in a war on cars, and others will view as a long-awaited remedy to a dangerous and auto-dominated transportation system, is all taking place on one of the few streets in Seattle owned by Parks and Recreation. That explains the added safety features as a way to improve the road for all users, make it safer for walkers and bicyclists and "preserve and improve the park experience," according to a city webpage.

Some emboldened residents and advocates want the city to consider permanently designating the road a park and drastically lowering the speed limit or banning cars altogether, more in line with Olmsted's description of a "pleasure drive" and something completely different from today's commutes.

Others, like the pro-driving group Coexist Lake Washington, have pushed back. They argue a powerful "bike lobby" has taken hold at City Hall "at the expense of the majority of people who get around by car."

For Mayor Katie Wilson, who took office this year, there's nothing complicated about it.

"To me, it was a no-brainer," Wilson said of the safety features added to the road this month. "It was pretty clear something had to be done. It was brought to me as a decision point and I was very glad to say yes to those safety improvements."

Sundays to weekends

Before the pandemic reordered the world's transportation systems, Lake Washington Boulevard between Mount Baker Beach and Seward Park was car-free for just eight hours on about a dozen days spread throughout the summer.

But as people sheltered in place, and then worked from home, traffic evaporated and the city saw an opportunity to expand Bicycle Sundays to something much bigger, and closed the boulevard to cars for weeks at a time in 2020.

In 2021, the city inaugurated Bicycle Weekends, which ran every weekend from July through October. A city survey that year showed overwhelming support for closing the road to cars for the full summer.

By the next year, however, cars - and wanton speeders - had returned in a big way, and the city scaled the event back, to 10 summer weekends.

That same year, then-Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales secured $200,000 in the city budget to look into how best to slow motorists, which led the Seattle Department of Transportation in 2022 to form a task force that included transportation advocates, park supporters, local residents, disability rights activists and Coexist Lake Washington.

In 2023, the group took a series of unanimous and lopsided votes in favor of traffic calming along the 3 miles of the boulevard where Bicycle Weekends occurs - basically Interstate 90 to Seward Park.

"We've got to do something better," said Terry Holme, who lives near Mount Baker Beach and was on the task force, describing the group's final recommendations and his suggestion that the boulevard has lost its original function as a parkway.

Work began in summer 2024 and the city constructed the first speed cushions, which are wide speed bumps that slow traffic but aren't as jarring as traditional bumps, and painted new crosswalks.

"The first half of the project was put in and everybody was really excited about that," said Clara Cantor, a community organizer with the Seattle Streets Alliance. "But we were like, where's the rest of it?"

It soon became clear that then-Mayor Bruce Harrell, who lives nearby, had taken an interest, and tapped the brakes on the project. Some speed cushions and crosswalks had been installed, but more cushions, stop signs and planned redesign of the boulevard's intersection with South Orcas Street were halted.

Advocates say they were left to follow breadcrumbs about why project plans had disappeared from the city's website.

In the end, Wilson said, Harrell put the project on ice and she thawed it.

"It was something I did," she said. "It was a plan that had been recommended (to Harrell) and then walked back."

Wilson said if the city is serious about having no deaths or serious injuries on the roads, it needs to be more assertive in slowing drivers down.

"This is not just about bicyclists," Wilson said. "This is about opening up that street to people walking, to people pushing strollers, to be a place where people aren't worried about being hit by a car."

Besides, she said, closing the road every weekend gives everyone - drivers included - greater predictability about when the road will or won't be open.

And Wilson noted that, as always, local access is allowed and the boulevard's beaches and parking lots will remain open.

Droves in packs

Yousef Shulman is the fourth generation in his family to own Leschi Market, the lone grocer on the Leschi waterfront, where snack food is sold beside a dazzling array of wine.

The market sits about a mile and a half north of the first speed cushion, but Shulman thinks they should be closer.

"We like the traffic that comes through here. Don't get me wrong. But it needs to be slowed and made safe," he said.

Shulman said he's asked the city for a raised crosswalk in front of his store. If the speed cushions are any indication, it'll work.

The city recorded speeds dropping from 35 mph to 30 mph where the cushions were placed. The posted speed limit is 25 mph.

Yet even if the safety features get Shulman's support, Bicycle Weekends does not.

"It's a huge deterrent. I get phone calls from customers. They apologize they can't make it to us," Shulman said. "If you add 10 minutes to somebody's drive, they're not going to come to you."

Shulman suggested the event makes congestion worse, not just by shifting traffic off the boulevard to already crowded routes like Rainier Avenue South and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, but also by drawing new cars to the area as "people park and take their children for a stretch."

Besides, he said, bicyclists already use Lake Washington Boulevard, safely and in numbers. "There's droves of them in packs," he said.

Olmsted's vision realized

If one person knows what Olmsted was thinking, it's Jennifer Ott. She literally wrote the book on his plan.

As executive director of HistoryLink, she's well versed in local history. She, too, was on the task force leading to the safety recommendations, and thinks the work that's been done on the boulevard lines up well with how Olmsted envisioned Seattle, especially the stretch where Bicycle Weekends takes place.

She empathizes with, but dismisses, the idea floated by Holme to close the boulevard entirely to cars and revert it strictly to parkland.

"The Olmstedian in me wants to say, if you have a jewel, you need to protect it," she said, suggesting that the boulevard has, in part, been "commodified into a traffic funneling space."

Olmsted, however, was practical, Ott said, and overall he'd be pleased with how Seattle has carried out his plan. But the boulevard wouldn't make him happy.

"He wasn't a fan of efficiency," Ott said, adding that in his letters he expressed frustration that "the engineers and civil engineers were given too much leeway and did things too efficiently." Olmsted wanted the boulevard to be meandering and bordered by native vegetation, not homes and yards.

Wilson, for her part, wouldn't comment on the idea. But Ott argued that closing the road would increase the sense of exclusivity enjoyed by the people who live near the boulevard, and make it less welcoming to others.

Despite the passage of 123 years, Olmsted's vision of offering a calm respite for all in the heart of the bustling city can still be more fully realized, Ott said.

"These temporary closures are a good way to do it. As long as they're temporary, people feel more welcome and included," she said. "I think Bicycle Weekends are a good way to do that.

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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 6:54 AM.