Seattle Parks and Recreation has announced the full 2024 schedule for Bicycle Weekends, one of the longest running open streets events in the US, along South Seattle’s Lake Washington Boulevard between Mount Baker Beach and Seward Park. The schedule aligns with last year’s Bicycle Weekend schedule, with 10 pairs of weekend street closures but fairly restrictive hours. Barricades will be placed on Saturday mornings and removed at 6pm Sunday evenings, with through traffic returning by Monday even on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend.
In making the announcement this week, Seattle Parks had originally released a schedule that extended the open street through Monday on those holiday weekends, and with time frames for the open street that matched what had been in place as recently as 2022: barricades would go up at 7pm Friday and be removed by 7am Monday, according to the original post. But by the end of day Thursday, the blogpost had been updated, putting back in place the more restrictive schedule from last year. “This time change correctly reflects the call for Bicycle Weekends to be more predictable, consistent, and to reduce the impacts on evening and morning commutes,” the update stated.
The dates when Lake Washington Boulevard will be closed to vehicle traffic and the roadway opened up to walking, biking, and rolling for 32 hours each weekend in 2024 are:
- May 18-19
- May 25-26
- June 15-16
- June 22-23
- July 13-14
- July 27-28
- August 10-11
- August 24-25
- August 31-September 1
- September 21-22
Asked whether the department had considered an alternative 2024 Bicycle Weekends schedule or whether the schedule had been changed in response to outside pressure from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, a Seattle Parks and Recreation spokesperson denied that was the case.
“Just an error, our intent was to use the schedule from last summer,” communications manager Rachel Schulkin told The Urbanist. “Somehow we put in the wrong dates, but corrected as soon as we saw. We apologize for any confusion.”
Seattle residents and visitors who want to enjoy a carfree Lake Washington Boulevard at sunset will now only have 10 chances to do so this year, with commuter traffic on low-volume Lake Washington Boulevard — the street sees less than 4,000 daily vehicle trips per day — prioritized ahead of Bicycle Weekends.
The 2024 schedule comes as the city grapples with the long-term future of Lake Washington Boulevard, which is located entirely on Seattle Parks property but also functions as an arterial street managed by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). A taskforce that met in 2022 and 2023 to consider potential options for the street agreed on the overall need for traffic calming along the corridor, with only a small minority of drivers using the street obeying the 25 mph posted speed limit and drivers regularly exceeding 70 mph during daylight hours.
A portion of $404,000 in funding from the Seattle Parks District, added thanks to an amendment from Councilmember Tammy Morales, is set to pay for those traffic calming improvements, though that amount of funding likely won’t be enough to implement robust changes throughout the entire street. A survey, up through May 12, is soliciting feedback on the options being considered, which overall look to be a fairly light touch and include a few additional marked crosswalks, new speed cushions, and an intersection redesign at S Orcas Street near Seward Park.
Rainier Valley Safe Streets, a grassroots advocacy group, is hoping to beef up the proposed safety upgrades, with additional speed cushions, another all-way stop, and additional crosswalks. In 2020, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways proposed permanently pedestrianizing the lakefront boulevard as part of a larger crowd-sourced network of 130 miles of people streets, which The Urbanist editorial board also backed and underscored for Lake Washington Boulevard.
In 2023, The Urbanist hosted a mass bike ride along Lake Washington Boulevard with Ray Delahanty of CityNerd during one of the open street weekends. The event sought to demonstrate the potential of the street and encourage people to participate in the laborious Seattle Process for changes.
Compliance with the restrictions on vehicle traffic on Bicycle Weekends has also been a significant issue, and one that doesn’t look to have an immediate remedy. Advocates for improving Bicycle Weekends, including Terry Holme of Rainier Valley Safe Streets, have been asking Parks to invest in sturdier barriers, a request that Holme took directly to Parks Superintendant AP Diaz at a meeting of the city’s board of parks and recreation commissioners this spring. Diaz dodged the question, instead pointing to the ability of Park Rangers to be able to monitor the area this summer, when the department’s unarmed police force had previously been restricted to only patrolling downtown parks.
As soon as next week, Seattle Parks will start spot improvements to the poorly maintained pathway alongside the Lake Washington Boulevard roadway. These improvements are badly overdue, with the street being essentially inaccessible for people who use wheelchairs right now due to to overgrown tree roots and the general unevenness of the surface. This year’s maintenance will tackle the area just north of Seward Park, with the area around Mount Baker Beach set to be improved in 2025.
Ultimately, 2024 looks to be just one stepping stone on the road to determining the long-term future of one of Seattle’s most popular linear parks, with 10 short weekends of Bicycle Weekends something to look forward to this year.
Ryan Packer lives in the Summit Slope neighborhood of Capitol Hill and has been writing for the The Urbanist since 2015. They report on multimodal transportation issues, #VisionZero, preservation, and local politics. They believe in using Seattle's history to help attain the vibrant, diverse city that we all wish to inhabit. Ryan's writing has appeared in Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Bike Portland, and Seattle Bike Blog, where they also did a four-month stint as temporary editor.