Strollers and bike riders along the Belltown waterfront will get a sneak peak today of a wide new trail connecting Pier 62 with the Olympic Sculpture Park. The Elliott Bay Connections "greenway" will open for just a few hours between Blanchard and Wall Streets to provide a full detour for Alaskan Way bike riders on the first day of Seattle's cruise ship season. The full grand opening comes next Tuesday, April 21.
The bike lane detour is needed due to an arrangement with the Port of Seattle that sees the city-funded protected bike lane along Alaskan close for cruise ship loading and unloading, sending riders across the street. Readers of The Urbanist may recall that the original design of that bike lane, which opened last year, would have required riders to cross the street at all times, cruise season on or off.
Funded via private donors including Melinda French Gates, Mackenzie Scott, and Expedia's Barry Diller, the new greenway provides a much better detour experience, with diagonal bike signals enabling the transition across the street – or riders will be able to stay on the east side of the street all the way to Clay Street once the full facility opens.
The Elliott Bay Connections team had a tight timeline: they were tasked with building a trail built between the end of last year's cruise season and the start of this year's, waiting until SDOT's bike lane project had fully wrapped up to start on the other side of the street. And they made it across the finish line with not a day to spare.
In addition to the wide trail, which is 11 feet wide with two foot shoulders on either side along most of its length, the "greenway" (naturally) features substantial planting areas, as well as benches placed strategically to capture views between Alaskan Way's different piers. New ADA parking stalls up and down the street provide direct access onto the trail.
Reclaimed logs from Puget Sound dot the landscaping, surrounded by oyster shells to provide that extra boost of maritime flavor. The greenway replaces the tracks of Seattle's decommissioned waterfront streetcar line.
The trail is a major element of $45 million in broader waterfront upgrades north of downtown that also includes a substantial overhaul of the Elliott Bay Trail in Myrtle Edwards Park, still under construction. Set to be completed before the FIFA Men's World Cup in June, those changes will come with a full overhaul of the separated walking and biking trails, new public artwork and landscaping, and an amenity building with a concession stand and public restrooms.
Public-private partnerships like this one, where the Downtown Seattle Association served as an the implementation partner between the City and private donors, aren't very common when it comes to transportation improvements in Seattle. On the Eastside, Microsoft enabled the construction of a new bike and pedestrian bridge over SR 520 in Redmond with its private dollars, and has also paid for upgrades on local streets around its campus through a public facilities district.
This new waterfront trail comes on the heels of the opening of several other bike projects near the area. Late last month, SDOT completed the last leg of two-way bike lane on Yesler Way between Occidental Avenue and Western Avenue, finally bridging the waterfront bike trail directly with the downtown bike network. That project ran into issues both getting approval from the Pioneer Square preservation board and dealing with antiquated infrastructure underneath the aging streets.
Cycling advocates have raised concerns about a last-minute change with that bike lane, with turn restrictions that had been set to improve safety removed at the last minute. Now, people biking can conflict with turning motorists, thanks to unclear guidance around who has the right of way, an issue first reported by Seattle Bike Blog. While conservative-leaning pundits tend to portray Seattle's bike lobby as all-powerful, late-breaking changes that worsen outcomes for bicyclists has turned into a bit of a pattern.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson also cut the ribbon on a two-block upgrade of Bell Street that had been open for a while, but was awaiting its final capstone: a reclaimed sign bridge from the former Alaskan Way Viaduct. While initial outreach on how to reimagine this short stretch at the foot of Bell Street found strong support for full pedestrianization, Seattle's Office of the Waterfront ultimately went ahead with adding a two-way bike lane connecting Elliott Way with the existing Bell Street Park, which is actually considered a greenway.
While all of this work is timed to wrap up before the World Cup, the infrastructure will ultimately last for much longer. An upgraded trail on Alaskan Way sets the city up to be able to replace the seawall along the Belltown waterfront and still provide multimodal access. While the seawall through central downtown was replaced before the creation of the waterfront park promenade, it still hasn't been upgraded along the northern segment of Alaskan Way, another expensive project that sits in the city's queue of issues to address.
For now, enjoy the ride, either along the east or the west side of the waterfront thoroughfare.
Ryan Packer
Ryan Packer
