Seattle’s new bike lanes are freight infrastructure
The family and I were biking to Alki for a fun in the cloud shade Sunday when we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a freight caravan hauling hundreds of pounds of produce to a Food Not Bombs community food support event in SoDo.
Volunteers with Cascade Bicycle Club's Pedaling Relief Project had their bicycle trailers full of rescued food from two PCC locations in north Seattle, and they were transporting it to folks who need it. Thanks to recent investments in the bike lane network, they were able to move all this food safely and reliably along a connected network of protected bike lanes. No worries that all the northbound lanes of I-5 were closed at the time. Instead of a cloud of mostly-invisible pollution, they left smiles as they rode by. One passerby in Belltown recognized what they were doing and yelled, Thank you!"
As we headed further south, lines of pedicab riders were using the new waterfront bike lanes to carry entire families from the packed promenade to the Mariners game. Pedicabs are nothing new, but they feel so much more at home in the bike lanes of the redesigned waterfront than they did weaving through the old crowded sidewalks.
As we kept heading south, we found ourselves on the under-construction E Marginal Way near the Port of Seattle terminal. Not only was the Port quiet because it was Sunday, there was a glorious temporary bikeway marked off with cones for the full length of the construction. I have never felt safer biking this stretch of roadway. We could also see the fresh asphalt path that will someday host a permanent bike route separated from the sometimes heavy truck traffic on this street.
Without the stress of watching for giant roadway cracks or worrying about cars and trucks behind me, I was able to let my mind wander. I thought about the guy down in Central Texas who transformed his dog trailer into a way to bike necessary supplies to stranded residents and rescue workers after a bridge was rendered impassible to cars and trucks. I also thought about how the massive E Marginal Way rebuilding project was sold primarily as a freight project, and how the bikeway was there mostly to separate people biking from those work vehicles. Yet the only freight hauling I saw that morning was happening in bike lanes. Sometimes, people driving cars on the road are heading to Alki for recreation, and sometimes people biking are hauling goods. It's all transportation infrastructure, and the more options people have the more resilient, healthy and fun our city will be.