SDOT has just released a 62-page report with toplines on how it spent Seattle Transportation Levy dollars during the first full year of the eight-year, $1.55 billion levy approved by voters in 2024. We went through the report to look for West Seattle-specific mentions, and there weren’t many, since the report is more focused on categories of spending.
(WSB photo, October 2025)
One relatively small West Seattle project does get a specific mention as “completed” – preventive measures (primarily median posts) in the “high-collision” stretch of Sylvan Way. Another West Seattle-specific project mentioned: The Highland Park Way hill lane-conversion project, described simply as a “protected bike lane,” is noted as “progressing in design.” (Also in design, outside West Seattle but often mentioned in WSB comments, the 4th Avenue S. bridge project over the railyard, where the outer northbound lane has been closed for years.) Maintenance work is mentioned too – page 27 features a photo of cleaning under the Fauntleroy Expressway end of the West Seattle Bridge, for example.
So how does this compare to what SDOT said it was going to do in year one? We reported on the 2025 plan in January of last year. That story includes a long list. Since the new report doesn’t get into many specifics, we can’t easily compare the two, but we recognize at least some of last year’s list as having been done (the Alki north-south streets that got speed bumps, for example), and you can probably identify more for the done/not done lists if they’re on routes you regularly use. As for this year’s plan – we reported on that in February, including this followup; we’ll see what’s indeed done by this time next year.