Seattle's Waterfront Bike Path Won't Open Until This Winter

The Overlook Walk is set to open this fall ahead of schedule, but the bike path opening lags behind.

With projects on the Seattle Waterfront nearing completion, one question keeps popping up: when will the city’s new flagship bike facility along Alaskan Way finally open? While many stretches of the two-way facility between Colman Dock and the Seattle Aquarium look like they’re getting close to completed, anyone looking to take a bike down to the waterfront will have to wait several more months. Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront tells The Urbanist that they don’t expect the bike path to open until the tail end of 2024.

“While most of the bike lanes have been paved, we still have work to complete before we can open them, including completing the planters and other work adjacent to the bike lanes, striping and other markings, and getting the bike signals up and running,” Office of the Waterfront spokesperson Iris Picat told The Urbanist this week, saying they plan the bike lanes “by the end of this year.”

The central waterfront bike path, which is already open south of Yesler Way, is one of the most highly anticipated elements of the $806 million waterfront revamp, funded through a combination of state funding, city funding, and taxes collected as part of the waterfront’s Local Improvement District (LID). Once it finally opens, people on bikes will have a fully separated route from Belltown to the Portside Trail that extends to the West Seattle Bridge. A separate bike lane connecting from just north of the aquarium to the Elliott Bay Trail in Myrtle Edwards Park, built by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is set to start construction later this year and complete the waterfront bike network.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/07/26/seattles-waterfront-bike-path-wont-open-until-this-winter/