Have you ridden a bike in Seattle lately? Whether a short trip to the park with your kids, a longer commute, community events or a trip to the brewery, more people are out riding bikes in Seattle than ever before.
The City of Seattle has made tremendous progress on our citywide bike network. In my neighborhood, in the South End, biking has changed completely in just the last 5 years with new bike lanes on Martin Luther King Jr Way S, S Columbian Way, Beacon Ave S, through SODO, and the Georgetown to South Park trail. This matters. It is safer than it’s ever been for me to get my kids to school, visit the grocery store, or commute downtown by bike. Rows of family bikes overflow the available bike parking every week at Saturday soccer games or the Columbia City farmers market. More people than ever before are seeing biking as a convenient, comfortable, and even joyful way to get where they need to go.
How Did We Get Here?
It took a lot of work getting here. From rallies against cuts to bike lane projects to memorial rides, Seattle’s bike community has consistently come together to push for safety on our streets.
We’ve come a long way – from celebrating Seattle’s first neighborhood greenway in Wallingford in 2012 to today, being able to bike from the ship canal trail down the Seattle waterfront and all the way to Alki without ever mixing with car traffic.
When I first started organizing with Seattle Streets Alliance, my first campaign was advocating for the downtown Basic Bike Network, which is now used daily by thousands of people.
Before it was built, we called out the city for not having a single safe, connected bike route from downtown to anywhere in south Seattle. Today we have options, from E Marginal Way to the Jose Rizal Bridge to S Dearborn St MLK Way S, to the Rainier Valley Greenway. Community advocates worked closely with freight advocates to improve heavily used corridors in SODO and Georgetown to make our industrial neighborhoods safer for everyone. We pushed to strengthen our standards for building safe, comfortable routes, including protecting bike lanes with concrete barriers as a new design standard. Now, I ride these routes every day, and I’m teaching my kids how to bike in a city that will be a very different experience for them than it was even 5 years ago.
Our city now has 31 miles of protected bike lanes and 55 miles of neighborhood greenways that didn’t exist 15 years ago. This change hasn’t come easy — people like you fought back when key projects were cut, delayed, and watered down projects again and again — and it made a difference. Increased ridership on personal bikes and Lime scooters is proof that Seattle is a biking city. We just need to keep connecting and expanding our network so that anyone who wants to ride a bike can feel safe and comfortable on our streets.
So What’s Next?
We now find ourselves in a new paradigm – Mayor Katie Wilson is a long-time transportation advocate with the Transit Riders Union and a bike rider, and someone who personally supported many bike campaigns over the years as a member of the Move All Seattle Sustainably Coalition.
Mayor Katie Wilson has made some very exciting announcements in the first few months of her term, but since the 2026 Levy Delivery Plan was completed mostly under former Mayor Harrell’s administration, we have yet to see what big projects she will prioritize for our bike network.
UnGaptheMap
Despite the miles of new lanes, Seattle has struggled to connect routes to each other. Too often, bike lanes end abruptly, leaving people stranded in the middle of dangerous intersections with no idea where they’re supposed to go next. That means that in most neighborhoods around Seattle, the people riding bikes regularly still have to be comfortable mixing with high-speed vehicle traffic. A trip by bike is only as comfortable as its most dangerous part, and too often a bad experience can push people away from continuing to bike to get around. If we want to meet our climate and modeshift goals, we need a citywide connected network of safe, comfortable bike routes that work as a system and connect people to schools, jobs, parks, transit, and community hubs where people want to go.
The good news is, in many places we’re really close! Many critical gaps in our network are just a few blocks long, and could be improved relatively quickly. Under Mayor Wilson’s direction, SDOT has already connected small gaps on Yesler (from 2nd Ave to the waterfront trail and ferry terminal) and 4th Ave (from Belltown to the Seattle Center). SDOT has also announced they will soon be connecting the 4th Ave gap between City Hall and Chinatown / International District, the downtown connection south from King St to the SODO Trail, and a two block gap on 9th Ave in Denny Triangle.
This is a fantastic start! And there’s more we can do. There are many gaps in our network that would be relatively easy to connect and would have an outsized impact on the overall usability of our bike network:
- 12th Ave through Little Saigon from S Yesler St to S King St, connecting Beacon Hill and the I-90 trail to Capitol Hill.
- NE 100th St from 3rd Ave NE to 1st Ave NE where the bike route ends just a block from the Northgate light rail station
- NE 40th St connecting from the University Bridge to the Burke Gilman Trail
- Florentia St from the Fremont Bridge to the Ship Canal Trail
- 4th Ave S from Dilling Way to S Main St reducing unnecessary wayfinding and hill climbing in our downtown network.
- Spring St from the Alaskan Way waterfront trail to 1st Ave
- Valley St from Fairview Ave N to 9th Ave N, connecting the future Eastlake Ave bike route to South Lake Union
These small changes would ensure routes are intuitive and easy to navigate, and make biking safer, more predictable, and accessible for everyone.
Bigger Neighborhood Connections
We also must acknowledge that if we focus on just the tiny gaps between existing bike routes, we miss huge swaths of the city where we don’t yet have that many existing routes yet (the far north, south, and western edges of our city), where gaps are a little bit longer or where costs make the project more challenging than a quick-fix (like 14th Ave S in South Park, through downtown Georgetown, or crossing Aurora Ave N). These projects are vitally important, and the city should continue to advance them.
The biggest and most impactful corridor project in the city right now is Rainier Ave S. This corridor has been one of Seattle’s most deadly for as long as we’ve been keeping safety data, and we are in an important moment to make dramatic safety improvements. In the northern section from Mt. Baker to Little Saigon, increased housing density, small businesses, schools, community centers, and the newly opened Judkins Park light rail station have dramatically changed the neighborhood, but not the safety of the street it centers around.
After years of advocacy, the 2024 Transportation Levy includes funding for a complete redesign of this section of Rainier Ave S. It has the attention of SDOT’s Vision Zero, bike, and repaving teams. And the WA state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) just agreed to remove a ramp and reduce the number of lanes on Rainier. Now is the moment for Mayor Wilson to step in, coordinate all of these projects, and get them moving, together, towards transforming this corridor for everyone.
People Power
What gaps in our network could we connect to make a big difference in your neighborhood? We need more than your ideas — we need your advocacy to make those connections a reality. Seattle Streets Alliance is a people-powered movement, and there has never been a better time to get involved with one of our local volunteer groups. Beacon Hill Safe Streets is working to extend the Beacon Ave bike lanes south, Central Seattle Streets For All is working to improve 12th Ave, or Lake City Streets Alliance which is working to connect Lake City to the Burke Gilman Trail. Wherever you are, there is a group of people who care working to make your neighborhood a better place to walk, bike, roll, and live and we need you!
Connect and celebrate with the Seattle Streets Alliance community on Saturday, June 6, 3:00 – 6:00 PM at our 15th Anniversary Street Party! We’re bringing our advocacy energy to the street in front of the Capitol Hill light rail station with live music, art, food vendors, lively activities, stories, and more. Come celebrate 15 years of wins, honor the organizers who made them possible, and help imagine the next 15 years of people-centered streets in Seattle.