E Marginal Way bikeway is now open, enjoy the street car-free for 5 more days
This summer, E Marginal Way construction crews maintained a separated bikeway coned off while the rest of the street was closed to most car and truck traffic. The street went from being a stressful and very deteriorated bike route between downtown and the Spokane Street bike trail to perhaps the most bike-friendly street in the city, at least temporarily. Now the project team has completed work on the permanent bikeway, which officially opened today as they prepare to reopen the street to motor vehicle traffic October 14. SDOT, Cascade Bicycle Club and West Seattle Bike Connections are hosting a community celebration 10 a.m. to noon October 25 (details are to be determined, so stay tuned).
Don't tell SDOT, but I broke the rules and rode the new bikeway a few weeks ago on a family bike ride to a friend's birthday party in Lincoln Park. It is not only protected from the general traffic lanes, it is often separated by a significant landscaping gap. In most places where there is no gap, a concrete wall protects the path.
The bikeway crosses the street at the upgraded S Horton Street traffic signal, but a future bike connection will also continue on the east side of the street to S Spokane Street, giving riders options while better connecting to some SoDo destinations. That secondary bikeway is waiting on some railroad work and is expected to open in early 2026," according to the latest project update.
The street rebuild project was a high-budget $72 million freight project that received a mix of local, state, federal and Port of Seattle funds. It has become something of a demonstration project for how best to mix biking and heavy freight uses, and I hope it will be studied as a model for other projects both locally and across the country. The street is the most important connection between the new downtown waterfront bikeway and the trail nexus on the west side of the Spokane Street Swing Bridge where the Duwamish Trail from South King County and Duwamish Valley neighborhoods, the trail connection to Delridge, and the Alki Trail all converge.
The city is now working to complete the design the segment of E Marginal Way south from Spokane Street to Diagonal Ave S, though leaders need to hear your support for building the planned bike connection. Cascade Bicycle Club put out an action alert you can use to quickly and easily support safe and separated bike access on the rest of E Marginal. You can point to the success of this new bikeway as an example of the kind of connection the Georgetown neighborhood also deserves. The next phase of E Marginal Way work currently has funding for design, but significant additional funding will be needed before construction can begin.
With this opening, there is now a permanent trail connection from South Park to the Ship Canal Trail via the downtown Seattle waterfront. Thanks to recently-opened connections from South Park to Georgetown and Georgetown to (almost) downtown, there is now a nearly-complete 13-mile loop that connects to the stadiums.
By continuing along the recently-opened waterfront bikeway to the recently-opened Alaskan Way bikeway, riders can connect through Myrtle Edwards Park and the recently-improved Terminal 91 Trail to reach the Ship Canal Trail. With a short connection across the Fremont Bridge, riders can then reach the Burke-Gilman Trail. That means you can bike 55 miles from South Park to downtown to Fremont to Bothell to Redmond to Issaquah to Preston to Treehouse Point almost entirely on trails. And if King County would connect the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, you could even bike to Rattlesnake Lake or keep going all the way to Snoqualmie Pass or Ellensburg or someday maybe Idaho or even Washington DC. OK, maybe I'm getting a little carried away.
Most importantly, this project creates a permanent, quality connection through an industrial area that used to be a barrier to cycling across Seattle and the region. I hope that it also keeps everybody safe from now on. Rest in peace, Lance David.