The Fremont Bridge is the state's busiest bridge for bicycles.
It's also got some real safety issues that anyone who's ridden over the bridge could easily identify.

You'd think the City would take that into consideration before it spends $31 million to reconstruct major portions of it.

If you did, you'd be WRONG.

The Cascade Bicycle Club, Bicycle Alliance of Washington and Friends of the Burke Gilman Trail need your help.

E-mail the Mayor and give him a Piece of your mind. Tell him bikes and pedestrians need a safer Fremont Bridge. Ask the Mayor to stop the project until a good faith study of the non-motorized uses of the approaches can be done.

Seattle Bicycle Advisory Boards Report (pdf)
Fremont Bridge Flyer (90KB pdf) for posting around town

Background and Details

As the project now stands, Seattle is missing an opportunity to eliminate existing hazards and improve conditions for bicycling. That opportunity will not come again in many of our lifetimes. The 2 year project is scheduled to begin next spring (2005) and will replace 100 feet of elevated roadway on the south and 500 feet on the north side on the lift bridge. The lift bridge will not be altered.

Before Cascade, the BAW (Bicycle Alliance of Washington) and FOBGT (Friends of the Burke Gilman Trail) got involved, no reasonable consideration was given to studying the non-motorized traffic across or under the bridge. No real effort was made to reduce hazardous conditions that currently exist, including double-blind crossings of right-turning cars and through bicyclists. The Burke-Gilman Trail will also be closed for 18 months of construction without adequate provisions for a westbound detour, exposing both eastbound and westbound bicyclists to serious, predictable, and preventable hazards.

As stakeholders, we offered a number of specific suggestions. Most were rejected without study, including closing W Florentia to turning traffic (eliminating one of the most significant bike/ped hazards on the bridge) and substituting improvements to the westbound turn configuration to W Nickerson. A continuous detour for the closure of the Burke-Gilman Trail was denied.

The failures on this project are representative of greater failures within the City. This is largely because Seattle has no policy mandating that bicycles and pedestrians be accommodated in new construction and reconstruction of its transportation resources.

Who are the users SDOT is leaving out of their plans?

• Among workers residing in the cluster of 17 census tracts north of the Ship Canal and in the immediate vicinity of the Fremont Bridge, 1655 of them are bicycle commuters (journey-to-work mode on April 1, 2000, US Census).
• These 17 tracts represent the highest concentration of bicycle commuters in the state of Washington. Although comprising just 1.3% of Washington's census tracts and including just 1.8% of workers statewide, they are home to over 10% of the state's 16,174 bicycle commuters.
• Bicycle commuters are especially concentrated near the bridge itself. In the census tract adjacent to and containing the bridge's north approach, fully 5.9% of the nearly 4000 workers living there commute to work by bicycle.

Yes, there IS a mandate to improve conditions for bicycling in Seattle.

• Mayor Nickels' Environmental Action Agenda states the Executive's desire for "efficient, fair, convenient, and clean transportation" and to "make Seattle the most bike and pedestrian friendly city in the country."
• While freight mobility is vital and important, bicycle and pedestrian improvements outscored it (20% combined to 6%) in the survey of Seattle citizens' funding priorities in the 1998 Seattle Transportation Strategic Plan.
• Strategy OM4 in the Seattle Transportation Strategic Plan dictates that the city make "Opportunity improvements: capital improvement projects not principally oriented to safety can still provide opportunities to make safety improvements."
• Bicycle and pedestrian strategies in the 1994 Seattle Comprehensive Plan dictated, among other things, that the City develop methods for evaluating the provision and performance of non-motorized travel facilities. Strategy T52 in the plan directs the City to "consider barriers to non-motorized transportation, such as terrain, insufficient right-of-way, conflicts with other street uses, difficult intersections and crossings, and safety and accessibility for all users."

We need your help now.

Call or E-mail the Mayor. Again, tell him bikes and pedestrians need a safer Fremont Bridge. Ask the Mayor to stop the project until a good faith study of the non-motorized uses of the approaches can be done.