Someone built a bridge across Lake Union Park’s Missing Path Bog
Left: My photo of the muddy gap from January. Right: A photo from reader Dave showing the new bridge.Seattle has a new bike bridge across Lake Union Park's Missing Path Bog to kick off Bike Month.
Well, bridge" is perhaps a generous term, but the mysteriously-installed wood planks do provide a bikeable way to cross the sunken and muddy gap between two paved paths along a popular biking and walking route that connects the Eastlake and South Lake Union neighborhoods.
It's the second piece of people-created bike infrastructure we've reported on this week. The first was a series of plungers and and well-placed trash can someone used to create a protected space for the Pine Street bike lane at 4th Ave downtown. A person was hospitalized by a hit-and-run driver just hours after the city removed the plungers early Wednesday, but after further organizing and protest SDOT crews installed a stronger barrier by the day's end.
Lake Union Park Bog is not quite as urgent as the 4th and Pine situation, perhaps, but people are clearly tired of waiting for the city to fill in this gap. Path users have been waiting a year since construction on Vulkan's redeveloped Lake Union Piers finished, leaving a short gap between the end of the privately-funded path and the Lake Union Park paths. In that time, the gap has become very worn down, increasing the bump felt when transitioning from the dirt to the pavement. Rainy days turn the gap into a muddy mess, and deep ruts serve as evidence of bike tires slipping and sinking as they pass through. I named it Missing Path Bog" in a post back in January (which, fun fact, was included in a Seattle PWHL women's hockey team announcement this week, so I'd say it is now official lore).
While the gap is annoying and possibly a hazard for people biking, it makes the connection totally inaccessible to many chair users who can't navigate up the raised pavement lips or around the increasingly-exposed stump in the middle. It's a very short gap that connects the park to the contiguous parking lots along Fairview Ave N, and it is part of the Parks Departments's Cheshiahud Loop walking path around Lake Union, which purportedly creates access to the lake for all users - connecting Gasworks and Lake Union Parks, linking more than 35 pocket parks, street ends and waterways that ring the lake."
The new bridge is sort of a mountain bike trail style bridge, so it's also not an accessible connection. I love the statement it makes and that whoever made this put in the effort to try to make it better, but we Seattle really needs to build a proper path here. I have a question out to Seattle Parks about their timeline for completing this path gap and will update if/when I hear back.