West Seattle Bike Connections and friends welcome you once again to Bike Everywhere Day at the west end of the Spokane Low Bridge from 6 to 9 AM. Homemade baked goods, beverages and information on bicycling routes and planned improvements will be available, and local enthusiasts can answer questions about commuting, recreational cycling and other biking issues including the newest campaign we are cooking up. 
Tag: Spokane Street Bridge
Low Bridge Counts High
Bike Counts on the Spokane Street Bridge: +5.8% more bike trips this year through September, compared to same time in 2018. 2018 ended at 8.6% above 2017.
Seattle Bike Blog has a post today about the awesome increases at the Fremont Bridge. Counts from West Seattle confirm the trend.
Ridership would surely be even higher if we were not contending this year with
- the Avalon Way paving project;
- riding through the middle of a large homeless encampment on an isolated stretch of trail (now cleared);
- the messy and confusing Alaskan Way viaduct demo work;
- lack of progress on bike master plan implementation.
On the plus side this year:
- good weather in January (offset by ice and snow in February) and a summer without smoke;
- traffic congestion, including crowded buses slowed by Viaduct demo impacts;
- increasing popularity of e-bikes.
- What else?
Spokane Street Bridge Bike Counts
2018 bike count is +2.9% above 2017 for year-to-date, despite a wet winter/spring, closure of the bridge for over a week for emergency repairs in June, and then the forest fire smoke air quality alerts. If you look at the data in detail, a few things jump out:
- Weekday trips far exceed weekend trips. These mostly are working bike riders.
- Weather and light/darkness during commute hours are by far the biggest factors.
- Alaskan Way Viaduct closures cause a spike. See May 2016.
- Spokane Street Bridge emergency closures cause a dip. See June 2018.
- We don’t yet have the key safe routes to downtown to really grow the numbers yet. Fauntleroy, Avalon, Delridge, and East Marginal Way should be the game changers.
SDOT data. Our graph.