One big change from one less lane on West Marginal Way, and what else the West Seattle Transportation Coalition heard from SDOT

Last night’s West Seattle Transportation Coalition meeting featured SDOT staffers talking about the low bridge and West Marginal Way. For the former, what SDOT’s Meghan Shepard told WSTC was mostly a recap of last week’s presentation to the City Council’s Transportation and Public Utilities Committee. We covered that here. She had one new stat – numbers from the one week of free rides offered on the West Seattle Water Taxi and Metro bus users who used the Transit GO app. Shepard said 2,100 people used the app that week – the last of three weeks the low bridge was closed to street and path use – and 1,435 free ride tickets were redeemed. (The funding for that is from the voter-approved Seattle Transit Measure sales tax.)

Also last night, SDOT’s Brad Topol presented an update on West Marginal Way. You won’t be surprised to hear that its traffic volume dropped 60 percent “overnight” when the high bridge reopened in mid-September. It’s down to about 15,000 vehicles a day, same as what the volume was pre-COVID. The number of more interest: During a two-week test in September and October, closing the outside southbound lane north of the Duwamish Tribe Longhouse, driver speeds dropped 12 percent.

They’re expecting that converting that lane into a protected bicycle lane – its temporary use since the low-bridge closure – will drop the average speeds even more. And they still contend that won’t noticeably add travel time to roadway users.

They’re evaluating the corridor for other possibilities that could cause “visual friction” encouraging drivers to be closer to the posted speed limit (30 mph) – bumping out curbs, for example. As for path/lane use during the low-bridge closure, Topol said it averaged 100 to 200 a day, mostly bicycle riders. (added) Here’s the full slide deck from SDOT’s portion of last night’s meeting.

NEXT WSTC MEETING: The group is meeting every other month now, still on fourth Thursdays, so the next scheduled meeting will be at 6:30 pm March 23rd. They might switch over to hybrid – in-person and online – meetings by then; they haven’t yet finalized a location.

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