SDOT is planning to repave SW Roxbury Street from 16th to 18th Ave SW next week.
Roxbury is a key east-west street, especially with the WS bridge out. If you were choosing an east-west bike route across the south end, this would be it for directness and grades. But It has some of the roughest paving in West Seattle, and incomplete, substandard bike lanes. It’s Move Seattle Levy complete repaving project scheduled for 2019 was canceled. Smoothing out paving is not all that is needed on a street where bike riders mix with buses and lots of cars, but it will help. We will appreciate the smoother paving for these two blocks while trying to track a straight line in front of the buses and trucks.
Unfortunately, this work misses the next block west, where a rutted, half gravel gutter masquerades as an uphill bike lane. Photo above. SDOT’s announcement says this “…does not preclude … future safety Improvements…”. We’ve asked for bike/ped safety improvements in the very near future.