Back in 2020, not long after the West Seattle Bridge closed, SDOT unveiled a version of the Highland Park Way/Holden safety-improvements plan that included rechannelizing the HP Way hill – removing a northbound (downhill) lane and installing a protected bike lane on the southbound (uphill) side. This idea generated considerable community concern (partly but not entirely because the hill was a vital artery for bridge-detour traffic), and SDOT shelved it later that year. Now a bike-lane proposal for the hill is apparently back. We discovered this while reading SDOT’s grant-proposal document published here, part of an application for $30 million in federal funding. Most of what’s proposed for West Seattle in the Safe Streets For All proposal consists of small projects such as curb ramps. But on page 15, we found the bike-lane proposal, now described as “protected bike lane, east side, separated 2-way bike lane” on Highland Park Way between West Marginal and Holden. No design or rendering is featured in the document, so we’re checking with SDOT, including the question of whether this is planned regardless of grant-funding status. The new 2-way bike-lane proposal isn’t mentioned on SDOT’s HP Way/Holden project page, which recaps the scrapping of the previous idea and notes the community suggestion that the existing east-side roadside path be widened instead.
West Seattle, Washington
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