Biking to transit is the ultimate hack to get around I-5 construction this summer (and every other day, too)

I originally made this image in a post encouraging people to sell their Teslas and replace them with a bike and an ORCA transit card, but it works here, too.

I-5 rehab work has made the Seattle region's unreliable car driving network even less reliable, and there's still nearly a month to go before it is restored to its usual level of unreliability.

The solution for folks within convenient biking distance of their destinations is clear: Bike! Judging by the huge numbers I saw biking on the Burke-Gilman Trail in Fremont and on the Westlake bikeway during the evening rush Tuesday, a lot of people have gotten this memo. I suspect many of them may even start biking to avoid the traffic headaches, then continue biking past August 18 because biking in Seattle is great.

But I-5 has regional impacts, and there are a lot of people who don't live within a convenient bike ride from their destinations. Many of them also live in car-centric communities without easy access to quality transit. Well, that's where the secret art of the bike + transit combo shines.

If you are sitting in a home that is not within a short walk to an express transit route, and you plug a cross-region destination into Google Maps, it will likely spit out a ridiculously long transit suggestion. It is unfortunately understandable that many people would look at that time estimate and say, Well, that's not gonna work," and then decide to just join the traffic sufferfest (thus making it one car worse for everyone). The trick is to instead look for express transit options, then figure out how to bike to them. Link light rail is an obvious choice, but express buses (Sound Transit buses, RapidRide, or regular Metro routes that are more direct and frequent) tend to be more reliable and have more bus lanes and other bus priority features to keep your trips efficient and fast. Skipping the often slow and infrequent local bus also removes an entire bus stop wait and reduces the potential to get screwed by a ghost bus or bad transfer timing.

One way to figure out your bike + transit options is to look at a transit system map instead of using a route finder like Google Maps. Find your home or destination and look around it for a more direct transit route. On the King County Metro system map, thicker black lines and red lines mean more bus frequency, so those are likely the ones you want to aim for. Then you could use a route finder app (or any of these bike map resources) for bike directions to that transit line.

Another great option is to download the Transit App, which has one of the best bike route finders available and offers route options that mix biking and transit (I wrote about the feature back in March).

Odds are decent that you will find a few different options for mixing bikes and transit, and it will be up to you to experiment and explore. In the process, you may even get to know your own community better and find some gems that you'd never see traveling the same old boring car-choked streets that lead to the freeway. As someone who doesn't own a car, I am always shocked by how ugly our city looks from these busy highway and collector" roadways. Do people who drive everywhere think our region is ugly? There is so much more to discover in this place where we live once you get away from roads that begin with SR or lead to freeway ramps (if it's got a gas station on it, it's probably the ugliest road in the neighborhood).

My final tip is to buy a good a bike lock if you are leaving your bike near a bus stop, and then don't let fear of theft stop you from connecting biking and transit. Sure, theft is always possible, but the benefits of biking to transit are huge. Major transit stations will likely have some bike lockers or even a bike cage, but this is not always an option. You can also take your bike on the bus or light rail, though its not super fun to do this during busy hours (the train can be crowded and bus bike racks could fill up). There are lots of options to test out. If you get really into it, you can buy a folding bike that you can easily carry onto a bus or train.

You have the power to turn a summer of frustration and wasted time sitting in traffic into a summer of adventure in which you learn the dark arts of using all the transportation tools at your disposal to find the fastest, most reliable and most fun ways to get around. You may just find yourself leaving the car at home when the freeway lanes reopen August 19.