(WSB photos)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Sizable turnout tonight at Alki Bathhouse for SDOT‘s open house to show its “early design” for turning the west ends of Beach Drive and Alki Avenue into a permanent “Healthy Street“ and Neighborhood Greenway. The stretch around Alki Point has had “Stay Healthy Street”/”Keep Moving Street” status since early in the pandemic, declaring the street closed to vehicle through-traffic, but aside from the “Street Closed” signs at either end, it’s been largely unchanged. Now that the city has decided to permanently change the street, the question is how. What they showed at tonight’s open house included added traffic-calming features to narrow the street, such as paint-and-post curb bulbs and a traffic circle. One display tonight showed this array of possibilities:

(See above as PDF)

The other three showed these actual early-design concepts (in the first one, the “cul-de-sac” effect would involve moving the Alki Avenue street-closed sign a bit further west, to where the bike lane ends now, and narrowing the road entrance to one lane):

(see above as PDF)

(see above as PDF)

(see above as PDF)

On the displays as well as on a long paper rendering of the street, attendees were invited to leave post-it-note comments:

Some of the suggestions we read included “more speed bumps” and residential parking permits.

Sheets of paper for longer comments were available too, and periodic reminders to fill them out were shouted over the din. We listened in on some of the conversations; many attendees identified themselves as residents in the Healthy Street area. One attendee talking with SDOT’s Healthy Streets program manager Summer Jawson expressed concern about equitable access to the area; Jawson stressed that they planned to include additional accessible parking spaces, and that none of the current parking would be removed.

ADDED THURSDAY AFTERNOON: SDOT spokesperson Ethan Bergerson sent us a clarification on Jawson’s parking comment, saying she was speaking “in reference to specific areas near intersections where we planned to install painted curb extensions … clarifying that this would not remove legal parking spaces because it is already illegal to park within 30 feet of these intersections (or in the intersection itself). We do anticipate removing parking in a few specific locations to make room for drivers to turn around at the cul-de-sac and to support some of the traffic calming and public space enhancements along the waterfront. One of our next steps on the project will be to complete a parking analysis to map out specific parking changes.”

WHAT’S NEXT? An online open house is planned at noon next Tuesday (November 15); the link is supposed to be posted any day now on the project website. Now that the “early design” has gone public, you also are invited to send comments to AlkiKeepMovingStreet@seattle.gov by December 9.

(SDOT photo)

Long-awaited improvements on a major route for bicyclists between West Seattle and downtown are closer to reality with this SDOT announcement today, one year after they announced the project was fully funded:

We’ve reached a final design for the north segment of the East Marginal Way Corridor Improvement Project. The project is now advertised for construction contractors to bid on! The community has long awaited this project and we share in the excitement of reaching this major milestone. We appreciate community members’ patience, support, and commitment as the design was developed and informed by public input.

The project will serve people biking, walking, rolling, and driving, and improve safety and mobility along this busy freight corridor. We’ll reconstruct pavement, rebuild and improve signals, build a protected bike lane, and more. Construction of the North Segment, which runs between S Spokane St and S Atlantic St, will begin in 2023.

We encourage you to visit the project website to learn more about key features, benefits, and phased construction plans. You can also learn more about the North Segment of the project. …

After we hire a contractor, we’ll go through a materials procurement period to purchase items that can have a long lead time. This time frame is dependent on the supply chain, which has seen significant delays since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once the contractor is on board and we have a better sense of how long materials procurement will take, we’ll set a construction start date and share more detailed information about what you can expect during construction.

Construction will disrupt traffic along East Marginal Way S. We’ll maintain freight truck access to the Port of Seattle terminals along East Marginal Way S but anticipate detouring all non-Port of Seattle vehicle traffic in the North Segment project area. We will maintain a way for people biking and walking to use East Marginal Way S, but the route will shift to avoid active construction areas. We’ll have mitigation and detour plans in place to minimize the effects where possible.

The project – estimated last year at $43 million – will be paid for with local, state, and federal funding. SDOT says it’s still looking for funding to cover sections of East Marginal south of the West Seattle Bridge.