As I reported in March, the city’s updated bike master plan implementation plan (sorry for the unwieldy mouthful, but that’s what it’s called) eliminates more than just the list of projects the Seattle Department of Transportation chose to highlight on pages 36-37 of the update. It also quietly eliminated nearly a dozen projects without including them on the list of official cuts. (I came up with this list by manually checking every project in the 2017 plan against every project in the 2019 update, then figuring out which projects went unmentioned in the 2019 plan.) Those missing projects include protected bike lanes around the city—from the University District to SoDo to Beacon Hill to the Rainier Valley—as well as basic bike lanes and neighborhood greenways. After compiling the list, I sent it to the Seattle Department of Transportation and asked them where the projects went.

Here’s what they had to say.

1. 11th / 12th Ave NE 2018 Paving (1.94 miles)

This project, originally a 1.94-mile bike lane along 11th and 12th Ave. NE between the University Bridge and Roosevelt, is partly accounted for under the new list of “Projects Removed,” which includes a half-mile protected bike lane along 12th between NE 67th and NE 75th Streets. The remainder of this bike lane is, according to SDOT spokesman Ethan Bergerson, accounted for as part of the “Roosevelt RapidRide multimodal corridor,” which could begin construction as soon as 2021.

The 2019 bike plan update describes the Roosevelt RapidRide project as “fully funded through construction pending [Federal Transit Agency] funds.” According to the Move Seattle Levy “reassessment” last year, which examined which of the projects promised in the 2015 levy could actually be completed given costs that turned out to be higher than the original estimates and federal funding constraints, “[a]ll budgeted funds [for Roosevelt RapidRide] are not yet secured. In addition, uncertainty related to Small Starts funding persists, particularly with regards to the schedule to secure a funding commitment from FTA. SDOT anticipates having to continue to advance the project at SDOT’s risk until at least late 2020 before securing funding.”

2. N 50th St 2019 Paving (0.64 miles)

SDOT all but eliminated this planned 0.64-mile protected bike lane connecting Phinney and Green Lake along NE 50th St—first by cutting it down to 0.27 miles (and pushing it back a year), then by reducing the scope of the project, which will now consist of two short segments of slightly wider, unprotected bike to the east and west of Aurora Ave. N. SDOT spokesman Ethan Bergerson says the city decided not to move forward with the original plan because “the roadway is not wide enough to accommodate protected bike lanes. Widening the bike lanes allows us to increase safety while also retaining parking in the area.” The need to preserve parking is the same argument that ultimately doomed a long-planned protected bike lane on 35th Ave. NE, which was killed after activists complained that eliminating on-street parking would destroy local businesses.

The bike lanes, according to Bergerson, will be one additional foot wide. Here’s the city’s fact sheet on the project.

3. N / NE 40th St 2019 Paving (1.12 miles)

This 1.12-mile unprotected bike lane on 40th St., which was supposed to be completed this year, gets a brief and partial mention in the bike plan update, which mentions that a 0.29-mile protected bike lane on N 40th has been eliminated from the package “due to design constraints & funding risk.” Bergerson says this PBL and the longer unprotected bike lane are the same project, although 0.83 miles of the original bike lane remain unaccounted for in the new update.

According to Bergerson, “During our recent outreach, we heard concerns about the plan to add a protected bike lane. In addition to concerns from neighbors and businesses about parking removal and loading access needs, we also heard safety concerns about the design from people who bike through this area. … Since there are nearby alternative east/west bike routes (Burke Gilman Trail and the N 44th St Neighborhood Greenway), we postponed the N 40th PBL to evaluate other potential spot connection improvements on or near N 40th St.” Seattle bike advocates generally prefer protected bike lanes over neighborhood greenways because they offer physical protection from cars, don’t force cyclists onto circuitous parallel paths full of obstacles like traffic circles and speed bumps, and make it easy for people to ride bikes to destinations along arterials, rather than on parallel paths that may be many blocks away from where they want to go.

5. Ballard Neighborhood Greenway – Eastern Segment (0.25 miles)

Bergerson says this project—described in the 2017 plan as a 0.25-mile neighborhood greenway along N 83rd St. between Fremont Ave. N and Aurora Ave. N—has been renamed the “Green Lake to Interurban Connection,” to “highlight the connection between the Green Lake PBLs and the Interurban/Fremont Ave NGW.” Although the 2019 draft plan lists this as a 0.38-mile project, Bergerson said that was in error, and the final version of the plan will reflect that the project is 0.25 miles long.

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5. One Center City – Spring Street BL (five blocks)

This five-block bike lane from 4th Ave. to 9th Ave. now appears on a list of “completed” projects, although the project that was actually completed was a scaled-back three-block version of the original project.

Update: In a followup email, Bergerson says the city has “additional paving work planned in this area” and will “reinstall and extend the PBL from 1st Ave to 9th Ave once the pavement construction is complete.”

6. Madison RapidRide (G Line) Complementary Route (20-22 blocks)

This approximately 1.5-mile bike facility between Boylston and roughly Martin Luther King Way S, the details of which were listed as “TBD” in 2017, was removed from the project list and “replaced,” in some places, “with other routes serving similar goals,” according to Bergerson. The “replacement” projects that roughly parallel the original proposal include a three-block stretch of bike lane on Union Street between 11th and 14th, one block of which has already been completed by a private developer, and a 0.67-mile protected lane that’s supposed to be finished this year as part of the Madison Multimodal Corridor project. Four other projects related to the (possibly former) Madison Street bus-rapid transit project are also listed as “removed” in the update, but none appear to exactly parallel the original 2017 project.

7. One Center City – Bell and/or Blanchard Protected Bike Lane

Bergerson says this six-to-seven-block bike lane project, which was originally scheduled for completion in 2020, will now be finished in 2021 and was ” left out of the draft Implementation Plan due to a copying and pasting error.”

8. One Center City – Vine Street

This six-block bike lane, originally scheduled for completion in 2020, should have been included in the list of project cuts, Bergerson says. He says SDOT will add this project to the list of projects removed from the plan.

9. S Spokane St 2020 Paving

This 0.39-mile bike lane on Beacon Hill was also supposed to be finished in 2020, and also should have been included in the list of project cuts. Bergerson says SDOT will add it to the list of removed projects.

10. NGW Connections (2018-2021) (4 miles)

This item, which referred to a total of about 4 miles of unspecified neighborhood greenways throughout the city, has been removed. According to Bergerson, the ill-defined greenways have been replaced in the latest plan by more specific “Safe Routes to School neighborhood greenway connections.” These projects—which include two greenways, totaling 1.32 miles, that were included in both the 2017 and 2019 plans—add up to about 9 miles of new neighborhood greenways.

11. 12th Ave S Protected Bike Lane (0.53 miles)

The new plan eliminates most of a protected bike lane along 12th Avenue S, including a segment between S. King Street and Yesler Way that passes by Bailey Gatzert Elementary School. In place of that 0.53-mile protected bike lane, the city will build a quarter-mile protected lane from the Jose Rizal Bridge (near the original southern terminus of the bike lane) to S. King Street. Advocates who noticed the cut have pointed out that the 12th Avenue south of Yesler includes many bike collision hot spots.

The city will hold a series of four evening open houses on the proposal, starting on April 23. Details on each of the meetings are available on the city’s website.

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