Starting tonight, the stationary portions of the Ballard Bridge and 15th Avenue NW from Leary to NW 57th Street will be getting a major facelift. Associated closures will have significant impacts to buses using the bridge (specifically, RapidRide D, Route 17X, and Route 994 when it operates), and people attempting to walk, roll, drive, or otherwise cross Salmon Bay.
When the project is completed in 2025, there will be a wide planted median between NW 50th and NW 54th streets replacing a southbound lane, a new signalized pedestrian crossing at NW 51st street, and new red-painted bus lanes to help RapidRide D get past a few pinch points in the area (PDF schematic of improvements, here).
Road Work Ahead
From now until the project is complete in 2025, expect delays attempting to walk, roll, or ride along 15th Avenue NW or crossing the Ballard Bridge. You can sign up here for project updates and information on upcoming closures directly from SDOT.
This map shows traffic impacts planned from July 8 to July 19, but impacts like these can be expected throughout the summer.
During the day (7am to 5pm, Monday-Friday), crews will work on repaving 15th Avenue NW, starting north of Market street and working southward over the coming months. Overnight (7pm to 5am, Monday-Thursday), crews will work on repaving the Ballard Bridge.
All of this work will reduce traffic to one lane in each direction, creating significant bottlenecks for traffic and more delays for an already traffic-prone RapidRide D.
From 10pm to 5am, no southbound traffic will be allowed across the bridge, forcing southbound trips of RapidRide D to detour along Leary to cross the Ship Canal at the Fremont Bridge, taking Nickerson to rejoin the route at 15th Avenue W south of the Emerson interchange. Despite the lack of dedicated bus lanes on Leary, these overnight detours should only add 10-15 minutes to a rider’s trip across the Ship Canal.
SDOT will keep at least one of the sidewalks open on the Ballard Bridge for people walking or rolling.
Potential Full Weekend Closures This Fall
Part of the project includes a seismic retrofit of 15th Avenue NW’s bridge over Leary Way and replacement of expansion joints on the Ballard Bridge itself. Completion of this work will require total closure of the bridges, which the agency is tentatively planning to perform over several weekends this fall. The bridges would close on Friday evenings and reopen the following Monday morning. Current potential closure weekends are listed as follows:
- September 6-9
- September 13-16
- September 27-30
- October 4-7
- October 11-14
Of course, SDOT is very clear in that the dates of these closures are subject to change.
During these weekends, buses crossing the bridge will detour to Fremont Bridge, resulting in major delays to any trip across the Canal. Transit riders between Downtown and Ballard might consider alternative routes, such as the 28 or 40, or using the 5 to connect to the 44 or 45.
Folks looking to walk or roll across the Ship Canal on these weekends can cross at the Locks west of the bridge or head east along either of the trails flanking the canal to cross at the Fremont Bridge.
Repaving for Public Safety
The Urbanist recognized this project last Spring as having “an oversized importance citywide, as the department takes steps to further integrate safety into projects”. However, at 90% design completion, the project had incorporated very little new safety features despite requirements from the beefed-up Complete Streets ordinance for all major repaving projects to consider safety improvements as part of the design.
A few months later, transportation safety advocates celebrated a significant win as the final design of the project was revealed to not just be a 1-to-1 repave, but to include several new features:
A new bike and pedestrian signal and crosswalk at NW 51st St, providing a new safe crossing point where none existed between Leary and 53rd.
Replacement of a southbound lane on 15th Ave NW with a new landscaped median between NW 50th St and NW 54th St, which is intended to calm driving speeds and provide pedestrian crossing refuge.
New lighting under the bridge along Leary Way NW at its north end, and along the pedestrian path near Nickerson street at its south end.
New southbound transit lanes with red “bus only” markings on 15th Ave NW between NW for one block between Market and 54th, setting up an effective queue jump across Market for the southbound RapidRide D, and for one block south of Leary on the onramp to the Ballard Bridge, guaranteeing space for the D to stop at its southbound station at 15th and Leary.
Click the map for a complete map of improvements north of Leary Way.
The Home Stretch for Move Seattle in Ballard
This project is funded in part by Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District, but mostly by the 2016 Levy to Move Seattle which expires this year. The levy’s replacement will go to voters this November, and is expected to fund similar repaving and safety improvements to Market Street, a project put on the backburner in 2020, and completion of the Missing Link along Leary Way.
In the meantime, the Route 44 Transit-Plus Multimodal Corridor (TPMC) project was completed last September, and the Route 40 TPMC, which will include first-in-Seattle Freight-and-Bus lanes on Westlake Avenue, has started as well. SDOT is phasing construction of the Route 40 improvements, which include significant improvements to Leary in Ballard, in coordination with the 15th Avenue repaving to avoid overstressing traffic in the area.
I don’t suppose SDOT would consider transit lanes on Leary and Nickerson for the full closures? Market might also need them for the 44 if drivers divert to Aurora.
That would likely require some concerted effort between riders and drivers to prove significant traffic-based delays during the first complete closures that could be solved with temporary bus lanes on Leary/Market.
I’d like to see permanent bus lanes on Leary regardless, but that probably won’t happen even if/when the 40 turns into a RapidRide route.
I’d like to see permanent bus lanes on Leary regardless
The bulk of Leary was left out of the changes for the 40 (which are going on right now). The only piece that will have bus or BAT lanes is the part in Old Ballard. There will be inbound bus lanes on 36th and Fremont Avenue (on the approach to the Fremont Bridge) and outbound bus lanes on Westlake (also approaching the bridge). It is odd that they didn’t do anything with Leary. At a minimum I would just extend the inbound bus lanes all the way to Ballard. I would do the same with outbound bus lanes but that would mean getting rid of the turn lanes. To me this would be a big improvement in safety, but I guess it wasn’t a priority.
I suspect that bus lanes were left off of Leary because that stretch doesn’t experience much delay, and the curb lane is currently parking/peak GP traffic. I think someone did some political math and decided the benefit of bus lanes where the bus is already rolling along at full speed most of the time wasn’t worth the political capital of taking parking/peak traffic lanes.
However, Westlake is a similar situation (but without the parking) and they’re piloting Freight + Bus (FAB) lanes there. Assuming those are a success, I’m hoping SDOT will able to implement those with less opposition from the freight lobby.
The problem is that Seattle doesn’t have much excess road capacity at peak. With the Ballard bridge closed, people are going to detour to Aurora (via Market) and Fremont (via Leary/Nickerson). Neither of those roads have a lot of extra capacity, and plenty of defects like lack of transit lanes and in-lane bus stops that will slow everything down once SOV traffic clogs things up.
When the Aurora bridge was closed after the Duck tragedy, SDOT managed to put in impromptu transit lanes on Westlake to keep busses moving. It seems they could do the same thing on Leary, Nickerson, and Market, all of which have plenty of road surface especially if parking is taken away.
@Skylar
given the route 40 transit plus initiative for fab lanes (mostly) on westlake i’d just stick with that for now. Given the existing pushback against the transit lanes, for “Leary, Nickerson, and Market” they will add some minor bus lanes along some of those roads as well and for additional bus lanes I’d wait until after the transit plus ones are implemented.
The schematic seems to show narrowing GP traffic to a single lane. I can’t imagine that’s really what they’ll do so I hope it’s just bad graphics. But of course that’s exactly what SDOT is proposing now on Aurora Ave.
Which map are you looking at? The full-resolution plan shows at least two full GP lanes each direction from Market to the Ballard Bridge.
southbound, two lanes cross the bridge and one lane goes below to the west, widening to two at Leary.
what is the purpose of devoting scarce ROW to the green median? That seems a waste.