Source: Seattle Bike Blog - 2nd Avenue
Copenhagenize often focuses on best practice design and infrastructure from Europe (it’s kind of in our name), but lately, we have been noticing some great projects and designs popping up on the other side of the Atlantic. We wanted to showcase them to illustrate that good design and infrastructure can be implemented anywhere. In the upcoming weeks, we will spotlight one city at a time – this week we are looking at Seattle, USA.
Seattle, in Washington state, is a city known for its coffee and rainy weather. Seattle has been pushing to become a bicycle-friendly city – investing millions of dollars into infrastructure and campaigns to encourage bicycle usage while informing drivers to look out for bicycles. The City has created a bicycle program that encourages citizens of All Ages and Abilities to get out and ride a bicycle by building infrastructure that meets this high-quality AAA standard. Let’s take a look at some of that infrastructure.
2nd Avenue is a major bicycle artery for the city, that runs north-west to south-east through the city centre. The City recognized that the bike lanes on the corridor needed an upgrade if they wanted the street’s facilities to adhere to their new AAA approach. As a result, in September 2019 the City upgraded the 2nd Avenue bike lanes from a simple painted bike lane into a fully protected lane. The outcome from the 2nd Avenue updates is a 38% increase in ridership!
Source: Dailymail - 2nd Avenue, priority bike light
7th Avenue previously was a one way 3 lane road with zero bicycle infrastructure. In 2018 the street was transformed into a 2 lane road, with some space for on-street parking and protected bike lanes with about 4 foot (1.2 meters) concrete planted buffers. The street now has a protected bike lane on the right side following traffic with a contraflow protected bike lane on the left. Today 7th Avenue functions as the main bicycle commuting corridor for citizens coming from the north into the city centre.
Source: Google Maps - 7th Avenue, here we can see the way finding, priority traffic light and the great bicycle lanes!
High-quality AAA infrastructure like this can improve the city’s bicycle connectivity for all users, making the streets safer for everyone and further encouraging new bicycle users. We think that in order to take advantage of this good infrastructure, Seattle should continue creating bicycle infrastructure that is intuitive and safe while keeping in mind the connection, and the existing routes in order to create a grid that connects the city by bicycle. Seattle even included a few bells and whistles on top of the high-quality infrastructure many of which copy best practice Danish bicycle infrastructure design. All intersections for both streets now have bicycle lights allowing bicycle riders an earlier start reducing conflict with vehicles turning right or left. Other design features include wayfinding signs helping users find other bicycle infrastructure and destinations in the city, leaning rails allowing bicycle users to rest at a red light while giving them an object to push off of when starting again. These examples can show other US cities what is possible and strive for a better offering to their citizens.
Source: Seattle Department of Transportation - 7th Avenue, leaning rail