After more than a year of advocacy and a petition, SDOT starts fixing the extra-bumpy crosswalk stripes on Burke-Gilman Trail in Frelard

Volunteers with Fix the Burke-Gilman file Find It Fix It reports about the bumpy crosswalk paint.

Part of the city's regular maintenance duty is to refresh the paint on about 1,000 crosswalks all over the city with the goal of retouching every crosswalk about every four years. Normally, this is a good thing, since it makes those crossings more visible to people driving. But in April 2024, people biking on the Burke-Gilman Trail noticed that the recently-repainted crosswalks seemed extremely bumpy. My-bike-sounds-like-it's-about-to-fall-apart kind of bumpy.

Something clearly wasn't right, so multiple trail advocates started asking questions and pushing SDOT to come back and fix the issue. In response, SDOT has started scraping off the old markings and applying new stripes to some but not all crosswalks.

Adding additional thermoplastic striping on top of old crosswalk stripes creates an extra tall bump. It almost looks like layers of a cake.

Kevin Troutt with Ballard-Fremont Greenways said he tried emailing SDOT, filing Find It Fix It reports and bringing it up in person whenever talking to someone from SDOT, but these efforts did not lead to a fix. The problem seemed to be that the paint" used to refresh the stripes is actually thermoplastic, which is thick. So when new thermoplastic is layered on top of old thermoplastic, it stacks up. Since a single crosswalk might have 24 of these extra-bumpy stripes, it becomes tedious to ride across. Troutt's observations suggested that about 40% of riders were riding outside the crosswalk lines to avoid the bumps, which is clearly not what you want when designing a trail crossing.

Then he started hearing from people who crashed. In all, he knows of nine people who have crashed either due to the bumpy stripes or, more often, while trying to avoid the bumps by riding outside the crosswalks. Beverly Neubauer spoke to King 5 News about crashing in May while trying to avoid the crosswalks bumps.

There's a gap, and my little narrow tire got caught," she told King 5 while standing near the location where it happened. My body went and my bike stayed. I have a little scar from it." Others suffered worse injuries.

After getting nowhere with his attempts to contact the city and after hearing about people being injured, Troutt finally started a petition and posted a few signs along the trail about the bumps with QR codes for anyone who wanted to sign.

I've been amazed at how effective signs have been," said Troutt. As of press time, there were 1,475 signers. I would have preferred for the official channels to work, but I sort of ran out of official channels."

An SDOT engineer went on a ride with Troutt to experience the bumps and observe people swerving outside the crosswalk to avoid the bumps. We found that while the crosswalk markings met all our engineering standards, some people were choosing to ride in the street to avoid riding over the markings," an SDOT spokesperson told Seattle Bike Blog. We want getting around Seattle to be an enjoyable experience and recognize the benefits of creating a more comfortable riding surface. We also considered that a smoother surface would be especially meaningful for people using a wheelchair or other mobility assistance device." In addition to scraping and repainting some of the worst-offending crosswalks in the Frelard area, SDOT will also change their process for crosswalk painting going forward.

From now on, we will measure the existing crosswalk marking height before adding another layer," said SDOT. This process improvement will help us to focus our maintenance efforts on the most worn crossing markings so that we can continue to have highly visible crosswalks which are also pleasant and comfortable for everyone to travel in whether they are walking, biking, rolling, or scooting."

Though Troutt's petition may have finally been the force that got the city moving, he wasn't the only one pushing. I recently joined a group called Fix the Burke-Gilman for a ride in which they stopped at every bumpy intersection for the entire length of the trail and everyone filed a Find It Fix It reports for each one. Peter Breyfogle, who has led the group for years, said they are pushing the city to smooth out and modernize all the trail crossings, not just the extra bumpy ones in Frelard.

A one of the oldest and most popular biking and walking trails in the whole state, the Burke-Gilman Trail is often the first place to discover safety issues like layer cake thermoplastic crosswalk bumps. Having so many people going through means even unlikely outcomes happen due to the sheer volume of users. So sure, bumpy crosswalks are an issue that is easy to dismiss because most people seem to deal with them just fine. But these are details SDOT has got to get right in order to prevent more injuries in this location and to avoid repeating the same mistakes in other places.

Also, don't underestimate the difficulty of something so simple as striping a crosswalk. Many road marking materials do not hold up well in our wet climate and fade or wear out far too quickly. Thermoplastic is painted on and then fired with a torch, and the high heat is supposed to make the plastic material chemically bond with the pavement and last longer. Thermoplastic stripes can have non-slip textures on the top to help with traction when wet and contain retroreflective materials to make them appear to glow under headlights. These are all great reasons to use the material on our streets. But now we're learning of one downside to thermoplastic stripes that SDOT needs to take into account. If cost were no concern, the city could build raised crosswalks at every trail crossing, which are safer for a number of reasons and do not rely so heavily on painted markings to communicate that it is a crosswalk. But the budget available for trail maintenance is not even close to what would be needed to raise all the crosswalks. SDOT will need to keep striping crosswalks for the foreseeable future.

Some additional help should be coming from the state over the next couple years. The Washington State 2025-27 budget includes $9.4 million from the 2015 Connecting Washington transportation funding package to address various safety issues on the trail-such as improving lighting, accessibility and crossings-under a budget item called Burke-Gilman Trail Transit Access, Safety & Efficiency Improvements." Senator Javier Valdez (D-46) wrote about the budget addition in an email to constituents after the end of the 2025 legislative session:

This funding will address key safety, lighting and access issues along the Burke-Gilman Trail in Northeast Seattle. Improvements include enhanced lighting in poorly lit areas, redesigned trail intersections to reduce conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and drivers, and better connections to nearby bus stops and schools. The project also includes new wayfinding signs and ADA accessibility upgrades to ensure the trail is safer and more user-friendly for all."