New Seattle bikeways coming to Space Needle ahead of World Cup

When the world’s best footballers descend on Seattle this summer for the World Cup, the city wants visiting fans to join in on the footwork.

With a goal of having 80% of people arrive to a match without using a car, Seattle is filling a gap in the downtown bike network, connecting the Space Needle to Lumen Field, where six matches attended by an estimated 750,000 people will be played between June 15 and July 6.

The nearly traffic-free ride is largely along Fourth Avenue from Seattle Center, which will host watch parties for matches and a fan-focused celebration of the beautiful game.” The new bikeway has been in the works since 2019, when the city drew up plans to make the Uptown, Belltown and South Lake Union neighborhoods easier to navigate by bike.

Seattle Department of Transportation officials made the rounds last week to get final comments before construction begins in March, presenting its plan to the city advisory boards focused on freight and bicycles. Work is expected to wrap up before Memorial Day. An SDOT construction moratorium runs from June 8 to July 13 to avoid disturbing the fútbol festivities.

In short, the project will extend the protected bikeways on Fourth Avenue to the north, past Denny Way and onto Broad Street, where cyclists will cross Fifth Avenue to join with Thomas Street and its Dutch-style bike intersection in South Lake Union. The lanes will be separated from the street using short concrete curbs similar to those recently added to the Union Street bikeways in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

A host of changes to the street will come with the bike lanes, including two all-way crossing “scrambles” similar to those at First Avenue and Pike Street near Pike Place Market and West Seattle’s Alaska Junction. Also the project will bring a loss of travel lanes on Broad, and a relocated loading zone for charter buses.

The changes must be made quickly to get them done before the FIFA Men’s World Cup, said Lisa Harrison, the public engagement lead for the project. Yet when all those visitors go home, the bikeways will remain.

“We can’t close all the gaps in the network,” Harrison said, “but at least we’re closing one of them.

Freight considerations have already altered the plan, separating the two-way bikeway on Fourth into two separate one-ways on Broad, where bike lanes on either side of the street will go with the flow of auto traffic. This was done to give more space for the biggest trucks making the turn onto Broad from Fifth, a turn also hemmed in by a column holding the monorail tracks.

Other driving concerns changed what is ostensibly a bike project. At Fourth Avenue and Cedar Street, the two-way bikeway diagonally crosses the street, a confusing jag that’s used in a few other locations in the city. For this project, it was done to avoid bikes crossing the four driveways to a triangular surface parking lot on Broad, Fourth and Denny that has about 60 spaces.

Cyclists also may find confusion in front of the Space Needle, where charter buses currently load and unload. Those buses will be moved west, which SDOT said will help reduce potential conflicts with the new bike lane, but they’ll be replaced by a loading zone for cars and ride-hail vehicles. Cue the dinging bells and befuddled pedestrians.

The two new all-way crossings, however, will ease bafflement for pedestrians and bicyclists alike.

The all-way crossing at Broad and Fourth will stop all traffic and allow people to cross the intersection from any direction, even kitty-corner as southbound cyclists will be directed to do.

The all-way on Fifth won’t be as anarchic. Instead, the five crosswalks there – three crossing Fifth, one at Broad and one at Thomas – will be synced to allow people to cross at the same time, but they’ll have to stick to the crosswalks.

Motorists will also contend with changes. Broad, which had much more traffic before the city closed its connection to Mercer Street more than a decade ago but still carries thousands of cars on the average weekday, will lose travel lanes. Currently, the street has two lanes heading either direction but will be reduced to one lane each way.

Seven corrals for rentable bikes and scooters will be installed in the project area, probably the primary way the world’s citizens will experience the city’s bike network between soccer matches, allowing them traverse the city, to the waterfront, West Seattle and beyond.