Watch: Waterfront bike lanes now open south of Union Street

From Waterfront Seattle. Click to see details.

A large section of the downtown waterfront bike lane quietly opened, connecting the Alaskan Way Trail toward West Seattle all the way up to Union Street near the aquarium. The northbound bike lane on Elliott Way up to Western Ave in Belltown is also now open, though you have to weave through the plaza area near the Overlook Walk to get there.

Hanoch at Best Side Cycling has a great ridethrough of the new lanes as well as some cool aerial footage of some of parts still under construction.

These lanes are among the final pieces of the Waterfront Seattle project, and they will create the first ever complete bike path along the downtown waterfront. It has always been frustrating to try to bike down there because there has never been a good option. Riders had to choose between either biking in mixed traffic on the busy roadway, biking on a busy and squished sidewalk, or attempting to weave back and forth along an incomplete and in adequate patchwork of alternative paths under the old freeway viaduct. Since major construction to remove the viaduct began a decade ago, the street and the packed sidewalk have been the only options.

This means that for most people who bike in Seattle, the waterfront has long been a place you avoid unless you absolutely must bike there. This has created latent demand for bicycling like no other place in the city. I agree with what Hanoch says in the video: The waterfront bike lanes will soon be among the busiest bike lanes in the entire city, especially once SDOT's under-construction bike connection to Myrtle Edwards Park is complete this summer. It will dramatically change the Seattle bike map as the waterfront becomes a major artery. It's the biggest addition to the Seattle bike network since the 2nd Ave bike lane opened more than a decade ago or the 520 Bridge Trail opened in 2018.

There are certainly things worth criticizing other than the very non-urgent level of priority the Waterfront Seattle team has given these bike lanes. For example, as Ryan Packer at the Urbanist reported, there are curving sections that squeeze down to 9 feet wide in places, a design downgrade from the 12 feet noted in public communications. That's frustrating, especially since the curves only seem to be in place in order to squeeze a couple parking spaces onto the street. I have also seen many jokes about the suspiciously sharp edges on the metal landscaping barrier along much of the bike lanes. It is worthwhile to voice criticism and bring potential concerns to project and city leaders. Seattle Bike Blog pushed as hard as we could back during the planning phases to try to get state and city leaders to reduce the ridiculous width of the surface roadway above the ridiculous underground freeway. This whole waterfront project could have been a lot better.

But it's also important not to lose sight of the wildly positive additions these new lanes will bring to our city. People on bikes are used to dealing with much worse than a few bike path pinch points, and I really don't think people are going to get sliced up by the planter box edges. The pros of this new bike connection will vastly outweigh the cons. It's going to be messy and exciting.

I do hope SDOT and the Waterfront Seattle team are prepared to make adjustments and fixes as needed, especially regarding people walking in the bike lanes. The new lanes have only been open a few January days, and I'm already hearing about conflicts with tourists walking in them. Especially in this tourist-heavy area where there will be a lot of people who are not in the habit of noticing the difference between a sidewalk and a bike lane, the design needs to be overly obvious and clear that people are not supposed to walk there. As anyone who has spent time in a tourist-heavy area knows, we'll never stop everyone from walking where they shouldn't, but good design can stop most people.

I also want to reiterate a point I have made previously: Seattle should prepare a single name for the entire waterfront biking and walking route that includes the Alaskan Way Trail, the Waterfront Seattle bike lane, SDOT's Alaskan Way Safety Project bike lane, the Elliott Bay Trail (Seattle Parks and Port of Seattle sections), and perhaps also the under-construction E Marginal Way bike lanes (opening in 2026). This is a bike route that hasn't really existed before, so there's no obvious name for it to inherit. Extending the name Elliott Bay Trail," to include the entire route along Elliott Bay is probably the simplest option, though this could also be an opportunity to give the route a Lushootseed name or rebrand the whole thing as something like the Seattle Downtown Waterfront Trail or the Seattle Seawall Trail. There are a lot of good options, I'm sure.

For a different look at the newly opened bike lane section, Bob Svercl posted a video showing what it's like to ride them in the dark:

1/2 I heard that more of the Seattle Waterfront bike path along Alaskan Way opened, so I checked it out. It's still not fully open, but I took some footage to show what it's like.This 1st video goes from Union St to Spring St#SEAbikes #seattle@typewriteralley.bsky.social @seattlebikeblog.com

- Bob Svercl (he/him) (@bobco85.bsky.social) 2025-01-25T05:35:43.362Z

2/2 Here is a 2nd video riding the bike path along Alaskan Way, this time from Spring St to Yesler Way where it connects with the rest of the previously constructed bike path.The bike path is now continuous from the trail at Atlantic St all the way to Union St#SEAbikes #seattle

- Bob Svercl (he/him) (@bobco85.bsky.social) 2025-01-25T05:35:43.363Z