Post navigation

Prev: (09/22/17) | Next: (09/22/17)

Capitol Hill Community Post | Bike Lane Installations on Pike-Pine Corridors Begin September 22-25

From the Seattle Department of Transportation

SDOT advises travelers that crews have begun prep work to install new bike lanes on Pike St and Pine St between 2nd Ave and 8th Ave for the Pike-Pine Mobility Improvementsproject. This work is weather dependent and subject to change.

On Pike St and Pine St between 2nd Ave and 8th Ave, travelers can expect:

  • Prep work from September 18 – 22
    • Prepping signal upgrades and parking changes
    • Marking locations of new protected bike lanes and posts
    • Installation notices posted along Pike and Pine streets
  • Installation from September 22 – 25
    • Removal of old pavement markings
    • Striping lanes and adding posts
    • Directing traffic with flaggers and police
    • Keeping access to driveways and alleys maintained
  • Late October
    • Install planter boxes

The new street design on Pike St and Pine St between 2nd Ave and 8th Ave will include:

  • New left-side protected bike lanes on most blocks
  • Paint lines and delineator posts with addition of planter boxes later
  • Removal of a travel lane on most blocks
  • Maintenance of transit lanes and all transit stops
  • Some left turns will be prohibited
  • Addition of two left-turn arrow signals at intersections
  • No changes to Westlake Park pavers

For more information please visit the Pike-Pine Mobility Improvements page.

Subscribe and support CHS Contributors -- $1/$5/$10 per month

14 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Adam
Adam
6 years ago

After the smashing success they’ve had on Broadway, I’m glad we found two more streets to ruin. Hooray! Meanwhile we’re knee deep in needles and human waste, but hey, priorities.

Andrew Taylor
Andrew Taylor
6 years ago
Reply to  Adam

Now look, I was riding down the Broadway bike lane only this week and actually saw another bike.

Christopher B.
Christopher B.
6 years ago
Reply to  Adam

Totally agree with you. Whoever thought up this was an idiot. I work on 4th and pike i see the amount of traffic first hand every day and i see maybe 1 bike per 100 cars. now they went from 2 lanes to 1 lane and cant even turn left on 4th now. Traffic downtown is already bad enough why the hell are they removing lanes when they should be adding lanes. hell the side walks can be pushed back a good 4 or 5 feet on each side and that’s more than enough room for another lane for cars and would do much more to help with congestion than freaking pike lanes. Who the hell wants to bike to work up and down hills and in the rain. I’m as blue as they come but ffs come back down out of the fluffy clouds and get back to reality Seattle.

Eli
Eli
6 years ago
Reply to  Adam

It’s true.

If you build short segments of bike lanes that don’t connect and go nowhere, you only piss off drivers while failing to enable mass-market cycling.

Seville is probably the best example of doing it right. And Seattle is probably the best US example of doing it wrong.

CD cyclist
CD cyclist
6 years ago

I bike to work in all sorts of weather… all year long.. *but* – I think these protected bike lanes are a waste and are not particularly safe.

Broadway is an absolute nightmare for everyone now.. it’s more visually chaotic, harder to see because of barriers and getting in and out of any of the businesses on the east side of the street is very difficult in a motor vehicle. Not to mention that it’s likely not even safer for cyclists.. Mid block, where the “protection” is, is not usually where one needs to be concerned – it’s a intersections and parking lot exits and the bike lane just makes those harder to keep track of everyone. It’s better as a cyclist to have already merged with traffic through difficult spots, rather than run the risk of having someone who is beside you turn into you.. or someone in a side street not see you.
Also.. even places that have huge numbers of cyclists, like Denmark, have recognized that any bike lane, protected or not, that requires cyclists to ride against the flow of traffic is dangerous. Even where cyclists are extremely common motorists don’t expect them to come into an intersection from the wrong direction and accidents increase. It’s totally frustrating to see the city waste money on these badly designed lanes that only confuse and irritate motorists even more.

David
David
6 years ago
Reply to  CD cyclist

The bike lanes they added on Pike & Pine downtown both go in the same direction as the car traffic.

Central Districtite
Central Districtite
6 years ago
Reply to  CD cyclist

It’s clear from your comment that you haven’t even looked at the new lanes, because they don’t go against the direction of traffic. Give em a chance.

CD Cyclist
CD Cyclist
6 years ago
Reply to  CD cyclist

That observation was about the Broadway lane which is bi-directional and the city has certainly proposed others like it. I think at least that awful idea was dropped for 23rd….. and, in any case, I even the uni-directional ones are bad.
Look at Dexter..

Bob Knudson
Bob Knudson
6 years ago
Reply to  CD cyclist

“Out of the mouths of babes”….in this case, an experienced cyclist who sees the folly of protected bike lanes. Broadway is a prime example…..the bike lanes there get almost no use and are a total failure, and they add visual clutter and chaos to the street. How much did they cost? (answer: ALOT).

CD cyclist
CD cyclist
6 years ago
Reply to  CD cyclist

I’m not sure that’s quite the right idiom…. I’m not naive or inexperienced about cycling, streets, or city politics.. I’ve had a whole 30 some odd years of being on the roads to figure out what safe is compared to what the illusion of safe is…

rob
rob
6 years ago

Drove down Pike on Monday (usually walk, but biz thing). It was pretty bad. And not helped by the bicyclist (who seemed to know what he was doing judging by bike/gear) meandering in the car lane. Another Seattle biker working hard to prove they are an oppressed class.

rob
rob
6 years ago

Pine I mean. Sorry!! Pre-coffee.

Fiorito Built Your Road
Fiorito Built Your Road
6 years ago

Why don’t you loud mouth, entitled, motorists try getting your punk ass out of your car for once and walk, or cycle? Why the heck do you live in a city if you want to drive everywhere. Move to a sunbelt sprawl auto-paradise if you think you’re entitled to drive everywhere. This is Cascadia.

Each ped or cyclist is one less car on the road. And truth be told, its the car’s causing congestion.

Do many of SDOTs design’s suck? Hell yes some suck. SDOT is a POS agency IHMO. But that’s not a reason to attack every attempt to make the city bike friendly.

The city is never going to be easy place to drive ever again… Mostly because all you new people have literally added several hundred thousand additional souls to our formerly quiet and backwoods logging & aerospace town.

When the population doubles and thousands of underground parking spaces are constructed to store Audi’s, Subarus and SUVs traffic will absolutely suck regardless of what’s done regarding cycling infrastructure.

When all the new people take the same damn routes because they don’t know local routes and mindlessly follow the GPS directions their “smart” phone spits out, traffic will suck regardless.

To be honest, I quit cycling because of sociopathic motorists using their cars as weapons to threaten non-motorized users of the street.

Bullying peds and cyclists is something a Trump supporter or other sociopath does.

Normal people show respect for cyclists and peds and honor their effort to get around without congesting this fine city. Normal people honor non-motorize users for not being tools of the oil industry. Normal people honor non-motorized users for reducing congestion in Seattle.

People attacking cycling sound like entitled punks like Trump.

rob
rob
6 years ago

I do walk. I said so in the first sentence.

Now I have evidence you can neither read nor write.