It’s roughly been a year since the *main* part of the waterfront bike path opened up and as someone who frequents that area quite a bit, I thought I’d nitpick as any Seattleite would.
The mission statement or general idea of the organization “Friends of the Waterfront,” was pretty straightforward, to improve mobility between downtown, Belltown, SODO and the waterfront. Has it improved? Yes, but with some catches. The bike lane has been beautifully landscaped as well as the new promenade as of last year, but when Spring rolls around, ALL of the plants start growing like wild and usually end up growing into the bike path. It’s caused some close calls between myself and oncoming scooter riders who aren’t paying attention. Some of these plants cause some serious blind spots, especially over by the ferry.
Another well-meaning idea by the designers was to create small little curves in the bike lane by weaving it inwards to parallel the small loading areas for Alaskan Way. It was intended to slow people down, but because of the added flora when it is in need of being maintained, causes the blind spots because of those turns. If you look at the metal plating on the sides of the bike path, you can see a plethora of scrapes where someone misjudged their speed and rammed into the wall of the bike lane.
Another terrible blind spot is over by the fire station where the lane opens up and for some reason, I’ve seen multiple people eat shit on bikes and scooters at that intersection with Madison. Most of them usually just ram their bodies into the pole for the stoplight and the guys at the Fire station stop being bored for a second.
Then there’s the matter with the security on the waterfront… the ESU. They have seemed to do their jobs really half-assed last year. I know a guy who was one of the street magicians who recorded himself getting harassed by the ESU (which stands for “Emergency Services Unit” or whatever, idk), for absolutely no reason. And of course, some random black homeless guy getting shot by some racist Nazi POS with a gun and it literally took 5 minutes for the ESU to waddle over there and figure out what to do, despite multiple guys who ride around on those Segway vehicles all day. They randomly tried to kick a buddy of mine (who rides a tallbike) off of the promenade, even though he feels less safe in the bike path because of all the out of control scooter riders.
The design of the bike path honestly doesn’t make sense when you’re trying to use it like it was intended to, honestly. If you want to use it to get to the north part of the waterfront, you have to go up a decent-sized grade to stick with the sidewalk on Alaskan-Elliot, then go down a sketchy right turn back onto the Waterfront via a steep hill. Having a random elevation gain on what used to be a flat ride (via the old bike path that ran along the viaduct and next to the old trolley tracks) seems super redundant… And then there’s the south area of the bike lane, which crosses over the sidewalk. I’ll stop for pedestrians, making full eye-contact with them and they *still* stop, which is frustrating because they have the right of way. Then of course, they’ll block the bike lane south of there by walking in it, instead of the sidewalk.
So yeah, that’s my two cents about the bike lane. I will say that it has made things slightly easier to get to and from all the neighborhoods connecting to downtown and the waterfront, but not without its problems. I honestly don’t know if SDOT ever will change the layout of the bike lane on the waterfront, because that was literally a $70m project of theirs. Anything they do from now on out is gonna cost an arm and a leg to the taxpayers.
submitted by /u/Dave_Abeles
[link] [comments]