The bridge crosses 520 just east of the new lid (Image: Washington State Department of Transportation)
Saturday, the Washington State Department of Transportation is inviting you to “walk/roll” across the ready-to-open bike and pedestrian bridge crossing the newly expanded SR-520 just east of the pretty much completed Montlake lid.
It’s understandable if you weren’t aware of a ready-to-open bike and pedestrian bridge crossing the newly expanded 520 just east of the pretty much completed Montlake lid. The $455.3 million Montlake Project to expand the freeway and lid it is a pretty car-forward project as it finally reaches completion after years of construction. The snarl of criss-crossing traffic lanes interconnecting with 24th Ave on the lid is bigger and busier than ever.
The pedestrian/bicyclist bridge just east of the new lid will provide some counterbalance to that motor vehicle snarl. It provides a north-south connection across the freeway for walkers and rollers only and connects to the SR 520 Trail, Bill Dawson Trail, or along Lake Washington Boulevard via the Montlake Lid.
The Montlake Lid from above (Image: Washington State Department of Transportation)
WSDOT says Saturday’s opening celebration of the bridge will include music, refreshments, a family-friendly coloring station, and tours of the Montlake Lid’s three-acres of lawn, bark, hardy plantings, and bus stops.
The Seattle Bike Blog says, if nothing else, the opening will bring relief “for folks sick of navigating detours” through the Montlake Lid construction zone.
The bridge celebration comes eight years after thousands walked on the new 520 bridge just before the replacement project opened to motor vehicle traffic for the first time.
The 520 replacement effort is now moving into third and final phase. CHS reported here on the start of construction on WSDOT’s $1.4 billion Roanoke Lid and Portage Bay Bridge projects.
WSDOT says the start of construction on the new lid and the bridge was originally planned for an earlier start but that the new schedule isn’t expected to change “the overall completion timeline for the project” currently planned to wrap up in 2031.
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I’m looking forward to checking this out, but I’m still grumpy that, with all of that new pavement, they couldn’t squeeze in a bike lane along Montlake Blvd through the interchange. While the new bike-walk bridge will be nice for many users, I don’t see myself using it much since I’ll be coming from Capitol Hill and won’t want to take the detour all the way over there to the east when I can just ride on the sidewalk.
Any word on when the bus stops come online?
This is a play structure, not a transportation system. The new lid design provides no bicycle access across 520. Cyclists are relegated either to an increasingly hostile road environment or to a crowded pedestrian facility. Wa Dot gets no credit for this atrocity. We go around calling climate change an existential threat and build this.
After the debacle which is the “Madison’s RapidRide G”, why do you believe that the City of Seattle is even remotely bike friendly?
Do you believe the trash gutter to nowhere that was added to Union was done for bikes? Think again.
The tire wedgie tracks added for the SLUT?
The dedicated lanes added to Broadway where you are lulled into a trap where drivers making a right hand turn will clip you.
All of the above removes parking for cars, the bike component is the excuse not the reason.
I felt bad about my thought of this but not after reading the first 4 comments. It’s ugly, simply said, after the city of Mercer Island put an end to finishing i-90 by demanding a lid over the freeway & the consequential delay of i-90 for 25 years until the city was finally happy, one has to say that i-90 through Mercer Island is stunning. It’s a decorative as a freeway can get & it took a lot of rich people 25 years & a lot of lawyers to get that. That lid over the 520 is ugly & has no beauty to it at all. Where is the art? Where is the landscaping? Where are the $10,000 trees? It’s like you have to fight the city if you need a permit but will the city fight the state for a better looking lid? One that’s functional for the people who will die early breathing all those emissions all day? It is screaming disrespect. Seattle ain’t poor.where does it go? Uhg