With the weight issue resolved, the sidewalk expansion and concrete planter boxes are back in the plans for the overpass

By Ryan Packer

A key segment of the $39 million plan to remake Pike and Pine Streets between Pike Place Market and Capitol Hill will proceed as it was originally envisioned. That project, now formally called the Pike Pine Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements project but which will likely continue to go by the catchier name Pike Pine Renaissance, is one facet of the larger Seattle waterfront revamp and is on track to start construction next fall with plans for a 2024 opening.

This summer, we reported that the plan to connect and upgrade bicycle and pedestrian facilities on both of these corridors had hit a snag on the I-5 overpass along Pike. The Washington State Department of Transportation, which controls the bridge, had determined that expanded sidewalks and concrete planter boxes to separate the bike lane would put too much weight on the bridge structure.

Now the project team has announced that the original design will proceed as envisioned. “The feasibility of adding weight to existing older bridges is based on a complex quantitative structural evaluation,” SDOT project manager Thérèse Casper said in a written statement.

“The City of Seattle and WSDOT have been working together to work through that structural evaluation process and have now concluded that the widened sidewalk and protected bike lane improvements are feasible on the Pike Street bridge.”

The proposed design for Pike Street over I-5 from this summer included two levels of sidewalk and plastic bike lane separators.

The scaled back design shown earlier this year included plastic posts seen in many other city bike projects around town, including a new protected bike lane that opened on 4th Ave in front of City Hall early this month. Lightweight and designed to be hit by a vehicle without making any dents, they aren’t very good at keeping bike lanes from becoming tempting places to park a car.

The restored original design will essentially double the width of the sidewalk on the north side of Pike Street, matching the plans moving ahead for the bridge over I-5 on Pine Street. The planter boxes separating the bike lanes from other traffic lanes will also be different than the ones SDOT has installed on bike lanes around town like 2nd Avenue, more durable and with a dedicated maintenance budget coordinated with the Downtown Seattle Association. The final product will not have quite as many planter boxes as the rendering above suggests, per the presentation given last week.

Pine Street will be a mirror image of Pike Street, with wider sidewalks opposite the new Convention Center.

Some other minor details on the project are still being refined. One of these is the tricky segment of the project where the existing bike lanes on either side of E Pike between Melrose Ave and Broadway will meet these planned couplets on Pike and Pine Streets. One issue to be resolved is just how people coming down the hill toward downtown will know to take a right at Melrose to transition to Pine rather than continue straight where cyclists will be headed in the opposite direction.

Another is the staging area where people on bikes will wait to cross the street on the east side of Melrose Avenue to continue up the hill: it likely needs to be bigger to accommodate more bicycle traffic. Per the project team, a diagonal bike crossing was discarded as an option because of the impact on everyone’s wait time at the intersection, including for people on bikes.

Once these changes are implemented, Pike and Pine Streets will be fully one-way all the way up to Bellevue Avenue, with further conversion to one-way operation all the way to Broadway still a possibility. Construction is expected to take 18 months, so the gaps in Seattle’s bike network between Capitol Hill and Downtown, with wider sidewalks to accommodate event attendees at two Convention Centers, will finally be filled in by early-to-mid 2024.

All this comes at a busy time for major arterials connecting Capitol Hill to the city beyond I-5. Ground has been broken on the bus rapid transit transit project that will transform Madison from the waterfront to Madison Valley in to a route for the new RapidRide G line in 2023.

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