This screenshot is barely a fraction of the new list of planned bike routes, which you can read in full here.
Young Americans are driving way less than their predecessors. Between 2007 and 2012, car ownership for people aged 18-34 dropped a whopping 30 percent. Meanwhile, since 2011, Seattle has seen a 59 percent increase in bicycle ridership. This jump has been credited to the city’s renewed commitment to safe bicycle infrastructure, an argument that proved its veracity when bike ridership tripled on the notoriously dangerous 2nd Ave corridor after SDOT debuted protected two-way bike lanes there.
Three months past the deadline set by Seattle City Council, SDOT has released its new Bicycle Master Plan for the city—a five year vision that will dwarf the 2nd Ave project in comparison, and is expected to begin next year.
“This five-year implementation plan emphasizes aggressive action to make cycling easier and safer throughout Seattle,” said Mayor Ed Murray in a statement. “As the new protected bike lane on Second Avenue shows, these types of bike projects can have a transformative effect on our growing city.”
The plan will add 33 miles of protected bike lanes and 52 miles of greenways across the entire city through 2019, as well as 225 bike racks and 15 on-street bike corrals.
Improvements include (but aren’t limited to):-Protected bike routes on Roosevelt Way NE (NE 45th Street to the University Bridge)
-Expansive new greenways through the Central District, Ballard, West Seattle, and Rainier Valley
-More protected bike lanes Downtown, Belltown and in South Lake Union
While this round of the Bicycle Master Plan seems massive on its own, it’s actually only the beginning phase of the 20-year project, which envisions 474 miles of new or improved bike routes for the city over that time. The five year expansion this phase of the complete plan outlines will achieve “35 percent of the protected bicycle lanes and 25 percent of the neighborhood greenways in the plan being complete.”
Check out the thorough year-by-year, street-specific breakdown of the proposed lanes and improvements here—below we’ve excerpted the plan’s chronological map of planned route expansions to give you a taste.
