In response to the indefinite closure of the Spokane Street Swing Bridge, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) announced Tuesday that it would be constructing temporary protected bike lanes on the two primary streets that make up the recommended detour for people biking.
The bridge, which has been open to marine traffic only since an ice storm hit Seattle on December 23 and caused equipment to fail, is the only access between West Seattle and the rest of the city north of the 1st Avenue S bridge, operated by the state as a part of SR 99. That bridge, while it has a separated bike and pedestrian path, is cut off from the rest of the city’s bike network due to the hostile and deadly streets on the SoDo side of the crossing. Initially, SDOT said the closure would last at least two weeks, with no more information available on a timeline to reopen since then.
At a meeting of West Seattle Bike Connections on Tuesday night to discuss the plan, SDOT’s Meghan Shepard said that the Spokane Street bridge will need to close later in 2023 on several additional occasions as they continue to repair work on the bridge, but that the temporary bike lanes would not remain in place after the current closure. If the subsequent closures in 2023 last more than a few days they will add them back, she said, but not for closures of around a day in length, due to the time it takes to deploy the barricades.
