The Fremont Bridge Should be Car-free

125 Replies to “The Fremont Bridge Should be Car-free”

1. Ballard Fremont Greenways (BFG) is an excellent advocacy organization working to make Seattle’s streets safer, more accessible, and more comfortable. While BFG is no longer focused on the pandemic-era proposal discussed in the article, the group is focused on the need for safe, comfortable crossings of the Ship Canal for people walking, biking, and rolling. If you would like to learn more or want to get involved, check out BFG’s website.

   1. And you can pay for the maintenance of the bridge from tolls, or from the registration from the bicycles. Or are we supposed to subsidize it somehow from vehicle fees and taxes?

      1. Maintenance is currently primarily covered by property taxes

2. The numerical argument is a bit disingenuous – your own numbers claim that 2300 cyclists and 1300 pedestrians use the bridge daily, compared to 17000 vehicles. Federal data shows that the average number of people in a car across all trips (work, social, with kids, etc.) is 1.5. That means that even when excluding transit entirely, 3600/29100 people (about 12%) get 12/51 feet of space (about 24%) of the road space. If you count transit as using the general purpose lanes, the numbers get worse for ped/bike.

   Of course, you can say that improved conditions will generate induced demand, or have other arguments for improving pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure such as comfort (which I totally agree with), but I think it’s really disingenuous to pretend that the numbers currently give existing pedestrians/cyclists a bad deal compared to drivers.

   1. Okay, but the point is also that 20,000 people ride transit across the bridge and that the general purpose lane configuration is bad for bus riders too. It would be stupid to count a transit rider as part of the general purpose group, when they would potentially be the largest beneficiaries of a car free bridge. And it would be wrong to totally disregard them.

      The current conditions do give a raw deal to pedestrians and cyclists. A narrow sidewalk is all cyclists get on the most important connection over the ship canal. For cars, the Fremont Bridge is potentially the least important connection over the ship canal.

      And using the national average for all trips isn’t any less problematic than using a blanket 1. Especially because the hours with congestion that “require” the bridge to stay in its current configuration are more likely to be in the 1 to 1.1 range for occupancy.

      1. Adding to this: there’s massive difference in how much space those 25,500 SOV passengers are taking as they cross the bridge versus the 24,000 Seattleites currently walking, rolling, or riding across the bridge.

         Two other points to consider: 1) SDOT wants to go from 2.9M daily SOV trips citywide (65% of 4.4M trips in 2019) to 1.8M daily SOV trips in 2030 (35% of 5.0M trips); and 2) Seattle is out of road space.

         The only agency working to create new right-of-way is Sound Transit, and we’ve covered the financial difficulties facing those projects. The only way to achieve Seattle’s mode shift goals (which are vastly worthwhile) are to prioritize non-SOV transport. Since the Fremont Bridge is in the shadow of the 6-lane Aurora Bridge and connects directly to central Fremont, it would be much more appropriate for the bridge to be refocused on moving many more people and many fewer cars.

      2. Yes, I agree with all of these points, but I’m just saying that the numerical argument for not enough space given to ped/bike is weak. Even if you redid the calculation with 1/car instead of 1.5/car. The comfort argument holds and I agree with it.

         The numerical argument for not enough space given to transit is much stronger, though I question counting all passengers on routes through Fremont bridge as 1 each rather than something like 0.5. Certainly all passengers that actually cross the Fremont bridge should be counted as 1, but other riders, it’s a couple minutes of delay that is as much the fault of lots of other intersection and bad dispatching as the bridge itself.

      3. You can’t look at the Fremont Bridge in isolation. You have to look at all the bridges that people driving personal automobiles have at as options for crossing the ship canal (University, Aurora, I5, Ballard, Fremont), most of which bikes are pedestrians aren’t allowed on, or are very uncomfortable.

      4. Sunny, you’re right that the numerical argument could be considered weak or disingenuous, but only if you consider the Fremont Bridge in isolation, as Cam mentioned. Regardless, if you re-read the article you might notice that the article only references the relative proportion of car space to non-car space once.

         Instead, Michael brings up the relative space allocated to cars to argue that lots of non-drivers use the bridge despite the bridge being predominantly allocated for general traffic. Neither transit riders nor cyclists have any space meant for their use that’s not impacted by some other similarly-busy mode, so the transit and cyclist mode share is obviously suppressed relative to a hypothetical bridge which has space dedicated to those modes. If Michael had suggesting that the bridge’s space be reallocated to be proportional to current mode share, then yes, that argument might be problematic. But that’s not what he’s suggesting, so it doesn’t really matter.

         But let’s explore that logic, but in the (still limited) context of the rest of the crossings between Central and North Seattle. There are 8 bridges and one tunnel which connect North and central Seattle:

         These 9 crossings provide 34 general traffic lanes, 13 pedestrian “lanes” (sidewalks), 2 bike lanes, 2 heavy rail “lanes”, and 2 light rail “lanes” for a total of 53 travel lanes. If we treat each lane equally (they’re not but let’s assume easy math), the proportions are as follows:

         General purpose: 64%
         Pedestrian: 24%
         Bike: 4%
         Heavy Rail: 4%
         Light Rail: 4%
         Bus: 0%

         If we adopt SDOT’s mode share goals (the baseline of which actually somewhat match the current lane ratios) as guidance for lane allocation, we’d want to something like this by 2030:

         General Purpose: 24 lanes (-10)
         Pedestrian: 15 (+2)
         Bike: 4 (+2)
         Heavy Rail: 2 (+0)
         Light Rail: 2 (+0)
         Bus: 6 (+6)

         Sounds pretty good to me!

   2. I guess the other factor you’d have to consider to really do a complete analysis is drivers on Aurora, which would see more traffic as a result of this change, with queues for the light at Bridge Way and 38th St. potentially spilling out onto the Aurora Bridge. The E-line would probably be mostly protected from this thanks to bus lanes, but people who drive on Aurora between Green Lake and the city center would likely see increased traffic.

      That doesn’t mean the change isn’t worth it, though.

      1. Yeah I agree. Ship Canal crossings should be studied as a whole because closing one will significantly impact the others. The delusion that closing the bridge will disappear all vehicular traffic is simply unrealistic. It will discourage a portion of it, but the rest will redirect.

      2. @asdf2… I agree with the overflow traffic onto Bridgeway and 38th St but disagree with your assessment on the E-Line. Currently, NB traffic exiting at 38th sometimes backs up along the bridge. This causes a back-up further down and the E-Line gets caught in it. An increase would only further delay the E (there’s no bus lane on the bridge). This would also affect the 28.

         The same thing occurred to the 60 when Madison St was reduced to a single lane in each direction in favor of another well-intentioned transit project.

      3. An analysis of the Aurora Bridge would absolutely be needed as well. Today, it carries about 65k cars per day. An increase of 10k-15k is not insignificant. But this goes back to the main point – do we (SDOT, the City) want to prioritize private vehicles or transit, walking, and biking? Should we continue to inconvenience everyone else so people in cars can save 3 minutes?

3. Living in Fremont for almost a decade, and owning a car for much of it, but also taking transit and using a bike for my main mode, I would strongly support this idea.

   Cars have a variety of options. I would take the Fremont Bridge with my car mainly when heading:
   1) To I-5S via the mercer ramps.
   2) To Queen Anne or Magnolia
   3) To SLU

   All have alternatives and often it was just a coin flip over perceptions of traffic.

   You can get to I-5S an number of ways, including Aurora to Mercer or options further south, beyond the tunnel, 45th, or 40th.

   You can get to Queen Anne or Magnolia by taking Aurora or the Ballard Bridge.

   You can get to SLU via Eastlake or Aurora as well, as you point out.

   Taking transit, you have fewer alternatives. Generally I would climb up to Aurora and take the 5, because the odds of the bridge being open were very high for Fremont Bridge routes. Waiting for all those cars to clear made transit nearly untenable across the Fremont Bridge even though I lived right on Fremont. This proposal would completely flip this scenario, where transit on one of the routes across the Fremont Bridge would again be usable.

   As for bike, I would, on average, cross the Fremont bridge multiple times daily. It was always an adventure with all the peds and openings and sketch merges with car traffic, and there just wasn’t any way to avoid it. Ballard Bridge is suicidal on a bike, and the University Bridge is way too far out of the way except for some very odd trips.

   I suspect you would see a very large mode shift to transit and bike if this proposal were adopted.

   1. How about making the busses safe first? Before anymore road reconfiguration happens, and frankly we should see some rollback, how about making the busses safe for the disabled, the elderly, children, and for the bus drivers.

      Ask any bus driver and you will hear all about how safe the busses are in Seattle? Look no further than their request for bullet proof/environmentally closed spaces they have been demanding for their own safety.

      Safety first, then busses. Until then?

      How about a little less entitlement?

   2. No amount of safety will satisfy everybody. Since bridge configuration and transit safety are unrelated, the place to talk about transit safety is an open thread article.

4. Does SDOT have the authority to toll the Fremont bridge? A managed toll would massively benefit transit while keeping the bridge open to vehicles and could be used to fund bridge maintenance. It wouldn’t directly help people biking or walking across the bridge but could help fund better connections (for example to the Westlake trail).

   1. Not unless the legislature were to specifically delegate (see RCW 47.56.820). As far as I know, only WSDOT has currently been delegated the ability to manage toll bridges (RCW 47.56.030). 47.56.820 also would prohibit the kind of toll you suggest as far as I can tell, since those aren’t strictly related to the operation of the facility. Variable tolls can be used to optimize system performance (RCW 47.56.580), but I imagine that the operating and maintenance costs of the Fremont Bridge are too low to justify a toll amount that would really make a big difference traffic-wise.

   2. Seattle has quietly studied tolling. I expect they have the authority to toll their own bridges and a cordon around centers. They have not done so. The Seattle Transportation Plan (Harrell-Spotts) did not include it.

      NYC implemented tolling last year. Traffic and transit flow improved. Stockholm and London do it.

      Optimizing network performance is exactly the type of toll needed; it should be variable; tolling is not needed unless there is congestion. The SR-520 tolls are variable.

      1. New York and London’s cordon is a large part of the inner city with ten times as many jobs, destinations, and residents than downtown Seattle has. I don’t know about Stockholm’s cordon.

5. I remember when Mike McGinn had his Frelard/3rd Ave W/NW bridge proposal, there was talk about making the Fremont Bridge primarily for bikes, pedestrians, and transit, but I don’t remember if that was part of the actual proposal or something I saw on Seattle Bike Blog.

   1. This makes the most sense to me. Its good to have more bridges anyway. This could be a two lane general purpose lane bridge with sidewalks, bike lanes and an extension of the 4/13 bus across the canal to run down 3rd Ave NW.

      Then make the Fremont Bridge transit (31/32, 40, 62), bike, and ped only.

   2. Good memory! https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/04/12/a-better-ship-canal-crossing/

      1. Good memory!

         Well that’s the first time I’ve been told that in, well, I don’t know when :)

   3. McGinn mused about a new transit-bike bridge; some of us asserted the existing bridge was best situated for bike and transit by topography and tradition. Note any new bridge is a huge lift; the touch down points on either side of the canal are very costly land; it may not be feasible; there are power lines. Note Seattle does not have funding to maintain or replace its existing bridges.

6. This proposal doesn’t make sense for people driving from Wallingford or Fremond to North Queen Anne or Magnolia. The Aurora Bridge and the Ballard Bridge are already heavily used and travel times would simply get worse. Remember that people with disabilities and folks with small children can’t so readily switch to bikes and buses.

   1. I just looked at Wallingford to Magnolia on Google Maps, the Aurora Bridge route is 3 minute longer. It’s just 1 to North Queen Anne. Both of these trips are directly served by the almost unbelievably slow 31/32 that crawls across the Fremont Bridge.

      Some people with disabilities can’t switch to the bus? This may be true in some very specific circumstances but people living with disabilities are way more likely to be transit reliant than the general public. And if someone is unable to use the bus due to their disability, they probably aren’t driving either.

      Sure, some people are unable to use transit for a lot of reasons. These reasons can vary greatly – from “they are idealogically to riding the bus” to “the bus is too slow for their needs”. Speeding up the bus at the cost of cars will bring some new riders into the fold, and it will frustrate others. That’s a political trade off to consider. Luckily, Seattle has specific goals and policies to reference about mode shift and such that should help facilitate this kind of thing.

      1. Some disabled people do have to drive. E.g., they can get up and down the bus lifts so they don’t qualify for Access, but they can’t walk more than a block or two to a bus stop or up a hill. But these kind of people have all kinds of trip patterns, and specifically driving across the Fremont Bridge is probably an infinitesimaly small number, not enough to keep car lanes on the bridge just for it.

         Any official proposal to reconfigure the Fremont Bridge would have a public hearing, and postcards would be sent to the surrounding neighbors informing them of it, so if they have a hardship with it they can make their case there.

      2. People with disabilities are LESS transit reliant now that the city has decided that bus stops within 8 blocks of a place counts as access. I am disabled and know many disabled, and it is almost impossible to get a bus from where you are to where you are going without a long walk someplace in the trip. And the city provided disability transit is good for those with no other options, but you end up waiting a long time for them, and riding in them just as long as they drop everyone else off. it can turn a 30 min dr appointment into an all day trip.

      3. It is hard to navigate through North Queen Anne hill and merge from Halladays St to cross ship canal via Aurora Bridge. It is not just the travel time but also stress to drive that route.
         If I am only going to Wallingford, this route will never be recommended because Ballard bridge and then N 45th is always faster. Almost every time I drive from west to east to Fremont/Wallingford/U District, I took Ballard Bridge or Fremont low bridge. The only time I go through all the trouble to access Aurora Ave is when I am driving to somewhere south of Downtown Seattle.

   2. > Remember that people with disabilities and folks with small children can’t so readily switch to bikes and buses.

      And that is okay. They do not need to switch because they can still drive to wherever they need to go. The extra few minutes it takes to drive somewhere might be enough for other people to switch modes. There are also a lot of people with disabilities and folks with small children who cannot drive and will benefit from this change.

      1. I think that is important to understand. What Micheal is suggesting is basically the Amsterdam model. It works. People still drive. If you want a couch delivered it will come by truck (not by boat and not by bicycle). But the truck will not take a direct route. Only pedestrians, bike and transit take the direct route. Driving in Amsterdam is not very direct which is why a lot fewer people drive. Yet driving is actually very pleasant. It is very counterintuitive but it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k

         Except in this case we are actually making it better for those who deliver couches (or things like, I don’t know, food) but the idea is the same. If you want to drive you can — it is just that the drive will be less direct.

         I think people have trouble wrapping their head around this idea because we are used to adding, not subtracting. The John Lewis Memorial Bridge connects Northgate with Licton Springs. It is only available to pedestrians and cyclists. It shaves a considerable amount of time for people using those modes. Yet no one argued that it should allow cars. That is because car advocates are comfortable with additions for other modes — they just don’t want to see subtractions for cars. But inevitably there will be subtractions. It is the only way for a city like Seattle to become a world-class city (or at least have a world-class transportation system). Cars — and for the record, my wife and I own two — simply don’t scale. Too many cars and things stop moving. People, good, everything — it stops moving. You can add more car capacity but even that runs into limits (see L. A.). You end up spending massive amounts of money getting nowhere (literally and figuratively). Once you reach a certain size as a city, the *only* way to affordably move more people and goods is to do the sort of things that Micheal is suggesting. To be clear, I don’t think this particular suggestion should be done now but eventually it will be done if we want a highly functional city.

      2. It is not a few extra minutes. If you spent any time in the neighborhood, you’d know that during a normal rush hour you are easily adding 20 minutes to access an adjacent alternative. I’ve sat over 30 more times than I can recall trying to go from one to another on daily school runs from Green Lake to Queen Anne. All these streets are jammed every morning and every evening. Cutting off a major crossing (we only have five city-wide) would be disastrous.

   3. There are also many people who cannot drive due to disability or financial stress, and regular transit riders are disproportionately lower-income and disabled.

      Of course we should try to keep any negative effects to a minimum, but the reality is that any change will negatively impact some disadvantaged groups.

7. Maybe we could build it as 3 lanes with 2 bike lanes on the side in interim.

   The center lane could be switch between northbound and southbound

   Aka in the morning two lanes south bound while in the afternoon two lanes northbound

   1. Reversible center lanes usually need movable hardened barriers otherwise people get confused which lane the center lane is going when the side lanes are going opposite directions. The problem is I don’t think the bridge could handle the weight.

      If anything, it might be easier (and better) to consider two permanent bus lanes (one in each direction) and two reversible traffic lanes. The bus lanes could be clearly delineated and have independent signals, while the car lanes could have large signage like the I-5 express lanes indicating “no entry” at the appropriate time(s) of day. There could even be moveable gates on the lanes feeding the bridge if the signage/signaling isn’t sufficient.

      1. > Reversible center lanes usually need movable hardened barriers otherwise people get confused which lane the center lane is going when the side lanes are going opposite directions. The problem is I don’t think the bridge could handle the weight.

         That’s only for the freeway with high speed of 60 mph. It’s common to have reversible center lanes with just signage elsewhere in the world for regular roads. Or even in america for example in nashville the korean veterans boulevard they just use digital signage for the 3 lanes

         https://maps.app.goo.gl/8PRa8ghPyjogCv119

         for a bridge example Hanover Street Bridge in baltimore also just has a reversible center lane and it has 5 lanes.
         https://maps.app.goo.gl/HkMPzz6kTHwDNnFc8

         it’s a bit odd but not that weird to have a reversible center lane for 3 lane on a bridge

      2. Huh, I hadn’t seen those. Neat.

      3. Pittsburgh has a few bridges with reversing lanes too.

      4. The original Mercer Island Bridge has reversible lanes with above lane markers (the green downarrow and the red X). Yes, they had a few spectacular crack-ups, but way over 99.99% of traffic crossed uneventfully.

      5. “had” not “has”

      6. For a bridge that is this short, I think what’s choking Fremont Bridge is the intersection on each end as well as frequent opening. An additional lane open to peak direction may or may not do much depending on whether the additional lane really can help create better signal timing and mitigate the intersection delay.

   2. I’m not sure that would provide much benefit. Traffic is peak-oriented but not hugely so. As Micheal pointed out, some of the worst backups are caused by the bridge going up which doesn’t happen during peak. It would be nice to have bike lanes but with only three vehicle lanes you would have at most one bus lane. I realize I’m more transit focused but I would rather have a bus lane both directions while the bikes continue to mix with the pedestrians. From a bike perspective, the proposed change would be a transition from good to excellent. In contrast, the Ballard Bridge right now is horrible (and getting it to merely “OK” is far more important).

      1. > I realize I’m more transit focused but I would rather have a bus lane both directions while the bikes continue to mix with the pedestrians. From a bike perspective, the proposed change would be a transition from good to excellent. In contrast, the Ballard Bridge right now is horrible (and getting it to merely “OK” is far more important).

         I don’t think the bus lane on the bridge itself as much as there would be bus lanes leading up the bridge on fremont and westlake in both directions already with the transit plus 40 project.

         > As Micheal pointed out, some of the worst backups are caused by the bridge going up which doesn’t happen during peak.

         yes i understand but i think it is still a worthwhile compromise. going straight to no car lanes at all is a bit of large political ask.

      2. The obvious compromise is “just” turning the outer lanes into bus lanes. Cyclists would use the bus lanes to get across the bridge faster than wading through sidewalk traffic, then enter the bike lanes on the north side of the bridge. Sure, the cyclists would slow the buses down to ~10-15 mph, but the bus would likely end up waiting at 34th anyways.

      3. going straight to no car lanes at all is a bit of large political ask.

         I agree. That is why I would first go to one bus lane (each direction). The 40 project will get you that from 35th/Fremont Avenue and 36th/Fremont Place/Fremont Avenue to the north. It will also get you Westlake from the South. But that still leaves the approach to the bridge from the north as well as Nickerson and Dexter from the south. Those should be done next.

         Then you have the bridge itself. If every approach merges into one general-purpose lane then I suppose you could squeeze it all into three lanes over the bridge. But that gets a little tricky. Assume this occurs from the north. There would be one general purpose lane coming from 34th/J. P Patches. There would be one general purpose lane coming from Fremont Avenue. These would merge. So that means on Fremont Avenue, south of 34th/J. P Patches, you have one general purpose lane and one bus lane. Then, before you reach the bridge, those two lanes merge. Meanwhile, there would be bike lanes to the east. This means southbound bike riders would switch somewhere north of that merge point to enter the protected bike lane.

         For buses this is a bit worse but not much worse. You have to merge with general purpose traffic but only for a short section. Then all traffic expands to allow for more bus lanes. For bikes it is better but not a lot better. I can see it as a step we would take but I think it is more likely that we go from one bus lane (both directions) to full on bike/bus (instead of something in the middle).

      4. > Then you have the bridge itself. If every approach merges into one general-purpose lane then I suppose you could squeeze it all into three lanes over the bridge

         From the north aka cars heading south on fremont it will already be only one lane after the southbound bus lane is added. The other lane will be a BAT lane.

         There can still be two lanes at fremont and n34th we are just talking about the bridge itself.

         I guess technically the bridge could be a asymmetric 3 lane situation as well. with a lane change in the middle.

      5. I’m not sure we are on the same page. Just to back up here, these changes can be considered a series of steps:

         1) Changes for the 40.
         2) One general purpose lane and one car lane each direction over the bridge. (This would also require changing the approaches).
         3) Your proposal. Three lanes for motorized vehicles and one lane for bikes. It means a bus lane and car lane one direction and a shared bus/car lane the other direction.
         4) Only allow bikes and buses over the bridge (the proposal for this post).

         There is something to be said for step 3 but I don’t think it is worth it. I think you either live with step 2 or jump over to step 4. It isn’t that step 3 is impossible. It can be done. It isn’t that bad but it isn’t that great. You have a merge somewhere between the buses and the cars (one direction). This can be done relatively close to the bridge which means that it wouldn’t hurt buses that much. But I also don’t think it helps bikes that much. Imagine we implement step 2. If I’m riding a fat bike (especially one with a motor) and it is a busy summer day with lots of pedestrians crossing the bridge then I’m just riding in the BAT lane over the bridge. This is legal and all I have to do is keep up with the buses for a fairly short section. If I’m in a bike with skinny tires then I avoid the metal grates of the bridge and just merge with the pedestrians as I’ve always done. Overall step 3 just seems like it is very low priority, even for the neighborhood (which has pretty good bike infrastructure). It makes one little section better but otherwise doesn’t make much difference.

         In contrast step 4 changes a lot more than the bridge crossing. For example, consider the slip lane from Fremont Avenue northbound (over the bridge) to J. P. Patches/34th eastbound. If Metro keeps the current routing, that is only used by bikes. That little section of northbound Fremont where bikes and cars have to share space goes away. The dashed line in this picture — https://maps.app.goo.gl/SJgftcPhyEGQ1Fqp7 — becomes a hard barrier protecting bikes. Not that it matters much — only buses will be in the other lane. There are a lot of other changes that would happen as well. Right now there there are east and westbound bike lanes right next to each other on the west side of 34th between Evanston and Fremont (across from the PCC). That could continue all the way to Stone Way (which connects with the Burke Gilman). You would have to change things at a couple intersections but it wouldn’t be that hard. I’m not saying that is the only option but a lot of things open up.

8. The circulation issues around a bridge closure would impact lots of people who live within a mile or two of the bridge. They’ve planned their lives expecting the bridge to be open. It’s very different than a street closure where the detour may be a mere block or two away.

   As with any major access closure for any reason, it really should be driven substantially by what neighborhood residents, businesses and schools need because it can be so disruptive to someone’s established daily life. (Note that Lincoln High School’s attendance zone is split by the bridge.) There are people that have to cross this bridge to access dialysis or radiation treatments — and riding a bicycle to reach the nearby treatment centers seems rather inconsiderate if not cruel.

   1. This feels like a point that boils down to “we can never do anything”. Every trip listed can be made on transit – but it’s currently too slow or inconvenient. If we’re serious about mode shift without spending a gazillion bucks, we can and should take actions like this that prioritize and encourage transit while costing us very little.

      For Lincoln HS students who drive to school, there are basically no places I can get Google to suggest using the Fremont Bridge. Even the corner of 3rd and Nickerson suggests an Aurora route at 8:00 AM.

      For dialysis and radiation patients, there are some concerns, but the only place I see where getting to the UW Clinic (Burke Building) via the Fremont Bridge is consistently the first choice is North Queen Anne. And even then, a detour to the Aurora Bridge is only marginally longer. It’s possible that traffic impacts from closing the bridge would alter this significantly, but that’s something that’s more like a “worth of future study” not a “reason to dismiss altogether”.

      The Aurora Bridge is a mere block away from the Fremont Bridge (in a manner of speaking). If we can’t prioritize transit here, where can we?

      1. blumdrew,

         Believe it or not, the reason Fremont bridge will never be car free is the exact reason Sound Transit is 30 billion plus underwater.

         There’s a physical cost to any projects (in dollars $$)
         And there’s a political cost to any project (in votes)

         Sound Transit pretty much caves in to any organized opposition and restructures projects in a way that costs the least in political capital and yet adds to physical costs, sometimes enormously so. Sound Transit has so little political capital it can’t even get permission to dig a subway to actual Ballard!

         For a minimum of physical cost, SDOT could restructure Seattle roads in way that would help bus traffic, starting with Denny and the Fremont bridge. But the political blowback would surely make Katie Wilson a one term mayor. Fucking around with “driver’s rights” is political suicide even in progressive towns like Seattle.

         You can go right down the line on every issue Greater Seattle has….. transit, public education, homelessness….. It’s the same “physical cost vs. political cost” struggle as the reason solutions can’t be found.

      2. Your response is just “we can’t do anything, so we shouldn’t try”. You have no evidence to cite that “fucking with driver’s rights is political suicide”. Tons of projects in Seattle have reduced car capacity, and I don’t often see people clamoring to undo them in any way other than shady back channels (see: Union bus lane for recent example). Did Bruce Harrell lose the election because he was unwilling to allow projects that added bike lanes over street parking? No. Transportation is a niche issue, and forms just one part of people’s political ideals.

         I personally believe that if it’s a political struggle, citing “it’s too hard” is a stupid reason. The whole point of all of this (writing, commenting, working in the community, etc.) is to attempt to create a bedrock of political support for rethinking the way we allocate street space.

      3. blumdrew,

         We’re talking about a new mayor that barely won, right? Taking traffic lane from Denny or closing a bridge to car traffic could move the numbers in an election an easy 2-5%. Imagine KIRO reporters interviewing pissed off Fremont business owners. Closing that bridge just keeps outsiders with cars (and money) from visiting “The Republic of Fremont “.

         My guess is the new mayor doesn’t give a rip about transit because she’s got big ideas for housing and childcare that use up absolutely all of her political capital to have a chance of happening.

      4. @blumdrew

         don’t worry. im sure if tacommee lived in the farm town back in the 50s he would be complaining about his own future single family homes ruining the landscape.

      5. WL – no, tacomee would be telling all the hillside farmers to move to the dust bowl if they wanted real opportunity.

      6. Tacomee, maybe it might be worth Sound Transit becoming a state agency so it has some power especially now that the state is solidly Blue and eastern WA has much less influence in state politics (which was the reason for it being a special regional authority). Then they can tell cities, counties, ports, state universities to go pound sand because we have a transit system to build.

         Even in the classic 1990s film on Seattle Capitol Hill grunge, ‘Singles,’ the main character was working on building a transit system for Seattle and it was a state agency.

      7. tacomee,

         Winning by 2,000 is better than losing by 2,000.

         Closing the bridge barely inconveniences anyone driving, because it’s not the fastest way to Fremont for a vast majority of trips from other parts of the city (and especially from the surrounding area).

         And if you think Katie Wilson doesn’t give a rip about transit despite being a transit rider and you know, founding the Transit Riders Union I’m not quite sure what to say. Other than you’re so obviously wrong it’s not even worth entertaining this kind of stuff.

      8. tacomee,

         I would encourage you to refer to the below quote from this article: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattles-next-mayor-is-willing-to-meet-with-anyone-including-trump/

         “Wilson was tight-lipped about first-day priorities, [but] in her most specific pledge, she wants a bus lane on Denny for the chronically late No. 8 Metro route.”

      9. poncho,

         A big reason I will never support Sound Transit is they have never, in my knowledge, ever told anybody who stood up to them to “pound sand” and the completely out of whack budget and poor station placement backs me up. Sound Transit is so weak, the business owners in Ballard tell them to fuck off and well, they just fuck off. So gutless.

         I don’t believe the State government wants anything to do with running Sound Transit…. Sound Transit wants State money of course….. and get ready for it! the State government to sign off on 75 year bonds so Sound Transit can finish “building the spine” and buy off any political opposition the same way it’s been doing for last 20 years. Why say no to anybody when you can just make their grandkids pay for the damn thing?

         Back to Fremont Bridge and “The Republic of Fremont” in general. Jamming all the cars going across the Fremont bridge onto the Aurora bridge would have a big political cost. Does Mayor Wilson want to pay the price? I’m not an expert and have no idea if the idea is “good” or not. I do know there would be political Hell to pay.

      10. Jason Li,

          Mayor Wilson will be able to work with SDOT and get that done for reasonable amount of money in reasonable amount of time.

          I’m not sure what that does to Denny traffic or the political blowback it causes. Everything has a price when you’re mayor. I think trick is do something with impact right away, critics be damned. If Denny doesn’t work, it could always be changed back.

   2. They’ve planned their lives expecting the bridge to be open.

      Even if there are people for which that is true, so what? Things change. Cities change. Just because someone planned on taking the 41 downtown to work every day (from their home in north Northgate) doesn’t mean Metro should keep it. The Magnolia Bridge is not long for this world. I’m sure there are plenty of people who love driving it every workday. But the city should not spend a fortune trying to maintain it — they should just expect people to use a bridge like the one at Dravus. Then, of course, you have the mother of old infrastructure: The Viaduct. A road so important to people that it didn’t need a modifier. For those from out of town, I’m referring to the old Alaska Way Viaduct that ran through downtown. People had bumper stickers displaying their love for the roadway. (This is a little kinky in my opinion but who am I to judge.) The point is, we got rid of it and plenty of people were pissed.

      The city is going to change whether we like it or not. We should change it in ways that benefit the most people (and hurt the least). We should not give special preference to those that expect things to remain the same forever.

   3. > The circulation issues around a bridge closure would impact lots of people who live within a mile or two of the bridge. They’ve planned their lives expecting the bridge to be open. It’s very different than a street closure where the detour may be a mere block or two away.

      I mean the time difference is usually only 5 minutes for most car travel cases.

      The “planned their lives” can be said about anything. The fremont bridge was originally for streetcars in the first place as well. If we go back far enough I could use that same justification to say it should go back to transit

   4. Well lets put it to a vote! As a neighborhood resident, I’m 100% for this!

      It also seems like maybe you didn’t read the article, since it clearly explains that detours over the Aurora bridge add a few minutes, even during heavy traffic.

9. Or build another Fremont bridge. This one between across 3rd Ave NW…

   Until the almost 100 year old Aurora Bridge is replaced (or duplicated) or there are major upgrades accessing the bridge on both sides, such as arterial widening, removing height restrictions and increasing turn radiuses for delivery trucks, closing the Fremont bridge to cars is another example of transit enthusiasm having zero consideration for the rest of the real world. The image of bikes & buses rolling back and forth the Fremont Bridge IS beautiful. But without mitigating the consequences of not just increased traffic but handicapping the access & mobility of non transit users is short sided.

   I’m 100% for this if capacity for general traffic is duplicated elsewhere.

   1. > I’m 100% for this if capacity for general traffic is duplicated elsewhere.

      Do you think Seattle should meet the 2030 mode shift goals set in SDOT’s 2023 Climate Change Response Framework? It is not going to meet the goals if driving is always the fastest and most convenient option for getting around the city.

      Also, a 5 minute delay is not “handicapping the access & mobility of non transit users”. Someone can still drive everywhere if choose to do so. Other people who choose to take the bus or ride a bike should also have a fast, reliable, and safe trip.

      1. Seattle set a vision of zero traffic deaths in 5 years. Admirable but realistically the city hasn’t/isn’t coming close to that goal. The city can barely fix potholes and some if its street designs actually perpetuate traffic accidents. So I’m not encouraged by its goals of capturing 25% of the public’s commitment to transit. It doesn’t reflect the reality that the public, including hyper liberalities, love the convenience of their cars.

         As for the extra 5 minute drive, those GoogleMaps times are based on current conditions and do not reflect the massive influx of motorists jamming onto Aurora on a regular basis. Then add rush hour traffic or event traffic. And what about the impact to traffic on the Ballard Bridge/15th Ave? Motorists who use the Fremont Bridge are not only coming from Fremont but Ballard as well.

         I am by no means against urbanism but it must be implemented with common sense and consideration of the impact on all citizens – not just through our own tunneled transit vision.

   2. I’d suggest a general study of all the Ship Cabal crossings. Each on individually seems to have issues about aging, road condition, demand and safety. Add to that bridge height and draw bridge issues.

      It’s easy to cherry pick ideas for a particular bridge. Or conversely find a way to kill those ideas. It becomes a “Seattle process” of incremental advocacy rather than objectivity.

      I’m reminded of how there are more rail transit lines than bus lines that cross the Charles River between Boston and east Cambridge, for example. Or how few Hudson River or Bronx River street crossings there are into Manhattan.

      With a study focused on the crossing challenges, a phased approach can be developed. Let’s face it: The condition of several Ship Canal bridges is questionable anyway and a mega-replacement plan is needed. One objective of such a plan would be to to minimize disruptions by drawbridge openings.

      The Fremont Bridge will be critical in a Ballard Bridge shutdown. But if a new bridge at a bit taller height (not so high to eliminate all drawbridge activity but high enough to reduce it significantly) in between the two could set the stage for both bridges to be repurposed for other things.

      Any support for a more comprehensive long-range canal crossing plan?

      1. @ Al S. “The Fremont Bridge will be critical in a Ballard Bridge shutdown” Dayum. I Didn’t even think about that…Or visa versa.

   3. This one between across 3rd Ave NW…

      I think it was mayor McGinn who promoted the idea of a bus/transit bridge at 3rd West. Several people suggested that we make that a car bridge instead while we convert the Fremont Bridge to bus/bike. From a bike standpoint, the Fremont Bridge is better. From a bus standpoint both would work except the 62 would have to take a bigger detour if it used 3rd. Of course that plan went nowhere.

      I’m 100% for this if capacity for general traffic is duplicated elsewhere.

      Not all general traffic needs to get duplicated somewhere else. A lot of it disappears. Here is a rundown of the studies supporting this counterintuitive idea: https://thecityfix.com/blog/traffic-evaporation-what-really-happens-when-road-space-is-reallocated-from-cars/. That being said, it is possible that things would be worse here for cars (but much better elsewhere). I’m not sure it makes sense to pursue this project… yet. Eventually it could happen, but for now I would continue on the current path. Add bus/freight lanes approaching the bridge from every direction as well as over the bridge. This means only one general-purpose lane for cars. It isn’t ideal for bikes/pedestrians but it isn’t horrible (the Ballard Bridge is much worse).

10. Cole does not mention transit.

    Smith: daily openings vary by season; they are many more openings during the sailing season, May through September. I did a econometric study in 1982 with 1981 data; on opening day, there were 70 openings. The original bridge did not have a car-oriented design; in 1917, Seattle was a streetcar city; there were still plenty of horse drawn wagons; motor vehicles were smaller; there were nearby streetcar barns on 3rd Avenue West at West Ewing Street and on Phinney Avenue North between North 34th and 35th streets.

    Transit service. If the Route 40 project is successful, it would probably make sense for Route 28 to shift back to Fremont from Aurora. The speed advantage of Aurora has decreased with congestion at the north portal and the Route 40 project. Route 28 needs more markets. I think the fall 2021 deletion of Route 26 was mistaken; the network would have been better off with a Route 74.26 and without Route 79. Extending routes 2 and 13 to the Zoo is flawed by the high capital cost and the reliability impact; they begin in Madrona and go through First Hill and downtown Seattle. Route 5 should be a major route; it should have more service; Metro planners did analyze Aurora v. Fremont; they could again; I suspect Aurora is still superior.

    Yes, all the bridges should be part of the study. Note that the Aurora Bridge has flaws and has been studied. Between 1940 and 1963, routes 5, 6, and 16 were electric trolleybus and used the Aurora Bridge.

11. Bicycles are toys. You can’t haul construction supplies or any type of equipment other than a laptop. (Aren’t those people still “working” from home anyway?) And there’s no way 1700 bicycles are crossing the Fremont bridge daily, more like 17. They’re aren’t 1700 bicycles in the entire city. I drive all over Seattle every day for work and see less than ten bikes. If you want to play on your bike try the Burke Gilman Trail, Green Lake, etc. Stay off the roads!

    1. I don’t know what route you take, but the Fremont bridge gets way higher bicycle use than the average street in Seattle. A big reason why because it connects so many important bike routes, including the Burke Gilman trail, Westlake, and the ship canal trail. If you stand next to bridge and count, you can see for yourself. On a summer day, you can easily count 17 bikes in as little as 2-3 minutes. Remember, this count includes both directions combined, both sidewalks combined.

       And, in any case, only a tiny portion of commuters need to carry construction equipment to work every day.

       1. I don’t know what route you take, but the Fremont bridge gets way higher bicycle use than the average street in Seattle.

          That is not the point. They have done studies. We know how many people cross the bridge. Claiming otherwise — without any reasoning — is nonsense. Might as well claim that there are no more than only a couple hundred people living in Seattle. For that matter, how many cars are there? A few dozen at most. Oh, and Bruce Harrell is not the real mayor — the city is actually run by a turtle named Freddy.

    2. This is like one of those “spot all the errors” paragraphs. I count five factual errors.

       1. I would almost prefer AI/LLM spam to a response like this.

       2. It reminds me of a commenter on a different transportation forum that would regularly rant about everything non-automobile being a waste.

          One of his rants once included the sentence “Buses don’t carry any people because they stop everywhere to pick up passengers.”

12. Would you be willing to sacrifice the sidewalks on the Aurora Bridge for a car free Fremont bridge?
    The reason I bring that up is because the Aurora Bridge does not have wide enough lanes for large vehicles going that fast. Large vehicles typically have to take up the right two lanes. Since there would be more vehicles on Aurora, would you be okay with the removal of the sidewalks on that bridge to make the lanes a little bit wider? Also, the 5 going on the Fremont is a great idea, expect that it’s paired with the 21, which also uses a drawbridge in West Seattle. You might want to separate the two routes if you were to have the 5 use the Fremont Bridge.

    1. I think having cars drive that close to the edge would be a recipe for accidents. But, I do think an argument can be made for restriping the Aurora bridge from 3 lanes to 2, in order to make the lanes wider. Because of bus lanes before and after the bridge, the 3rd lane doesn’t really add to the vehicular capacity anyway.

    2. The wings holding up the sidewalks are not strong enough to carry vehicles. This has been discussed to death; the driving lanes cannot be widened or they would have been. Only a few people per day take the very unpleasant walk across that bridge.

    3. Aurora is a state highway so you’d also need WSDOT’s permission.

       There’s practically zero chance either the city or the state would be willing to remove sidewalks. This isn’t the 1960s anymore, when the 520 bridge was built without sidewalks.

       The only way across on foot or bike then was at I-90 or going around the north end of the lake, or taking a bus. There was a time when Metro had free fares between Montlake to Evergreen Point (the two ends of the bridge); that was the non-car solution to getting across the lake. But that still wasn’t very practical when buses ran every 60 minutes.

    4. @tom and @mike

       it isn’t completely impossible. or at least the 2003 study thought it was somewhat possible.

       https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602bf75600dd0228caa17596/1626474311002-OZVDZ6BAK57DGPAGQ363/aurora-bridge-redesign.png?format=2500w

       > As a result, the WSDOT study recommended placing pedestrian and bike facilities beneath the bridge deck:

       > The proposed bridge improvement (Figure 6-6) would widen the lanes from 9.5 feet to 11.5 feet for the curb and inside lane and 11 feet the middle lane. A median barrier would be added to the bridge and approaches […] In addition, the sidewalks would be widened to 10 feet to provide for multiple users and non-motorized vehicles. The ramps connecting the existing and proposed sidewalks would meet ADA guidelines and strive to preserve bicycle and pedestrian access to neighborhoods on both the north and south ends of the Aurora Bridge.

       1. Thanks, I guess they think they can do it. It’s nearly a century old, and a very long arch, and they’re adding significant weight.

          And there is no way I’m driving next to the edge and especially not riding a bus across it in the bus lane with those short retaining walls. Ugh!

13. Great article, Michael! This was one of those times where I read the headline and was very skeptical but completely changed my mind by the end.

    Love the example alternate routes that you provided and that alone would have been enough to convince me. I have considered making similar arguments for bus lanes on Denny with Lakeview and Olive as alternatives, but displaced traffic from Denny could overwhelm those roads and explode travel times on them. However, for this case, throughput for the Aurora Bridge eclipse that for the Fremont Bridge and I’d be surprised if the closure of the latter meaningfully impacts travel times on the former.

14. 2 transit lanes and 2 car lanes seems like a fair compromise. If and when it’s rebuilt, dedicated bike lanes would be great.

15. I can see reducing automobile traffic to one lane in each direction, or having one lane be reversible by demand/flow. That would allow for one or two lane equivalent of bike traffic.
    I live on North Queen Anne Hill. Many times in the day, traffic getting on and off Aurora to cross the Aurora Bridge has cars backed up almost to Queen Anne Avenue. That is 6 blocks. Traffic in the right lane of Aurora exiting on the south end of the bridge dangerously backs up as well.
    The Aurora Bridge was built to lane standards of the 1930s. significantly narrower than more recent code. This means that trucks and busses often/ usually take more than one lane of traffic. During heavy traffic times this adds to average trip time over and around that bridge.
    I am a proponent of of mofifying the Aurora Bridge. If sidewalks were removed from the traffic deck level to widen the auto lanes, and pedestrian and bike lanes were suspended below traffic, everyone using the bridge would be safer and crossing would be more efficient.

16. Would Metro increase service across the Fremont Bridge if it was closed to cars? Would we then have more people crossing the bridge? If so, it should be closed to cars.

    1. We can’t say what Metro will do since Metro hasn’t thought of this. (It has no authority to reconfigure the bridge, so it hasn’t considered bus scenarios if that were to happen.) And right now Metro is limited by service hours and drivers to its current level of service. But in a theoretical future, when Metro has more service hours and the labor shortage has eased more, and Seattle really wants to leverage a bus-only corridor (which is almost like building a tunnel — it opens up possibilities that don’t exist now), then you could pencil in as many routes and destinations as make sense (and that fit the limited street space north of the bridge).

       Jack has suggested moving the 5 and 28 to the Fremont Bridge, and restoring something like the 26, so there’s three routes. And we’d want to bump up the 5 and 28 to 15-minute full-time frequency so that people can really use them, people who aren’t using them now.

       1. Not quite. I wrote that Metro had considered Route 5 in the past. I suggest they study Route 28. I dislike the deletion of Route 26 in 2021. All would be subject to study. All would be subject to limited operators and hours. It is difficult to undo past decisions. The traffic study would probably predict grid lock. Aurora is on the way to grid lock in the p.m. peak now.

          The improved ROW is parallel to Denny Way. If it really had BAT lanes, it would deserve more service. Two ways of getting them are Route 11 and a streamlined Route 8. I doubt no right on red is compatible with the Denny Way BAT lanes; the ped crossings would delay the right turners who would delay Route 8.

17. Clearly you do not live in the neighborhood near the bridge. From Seattle pacific university to Aurora northbound (ie, Canlis) already takes 20 minutes, unless you are travelling pre-dawn or at 10 to noon. Your proposed route up 6th a single lane. It is not a long enough road to hold all the traffic. And that entrance to Aurora is the only way people on Queen Anne can get off the hill to go north other than Fremont bridge. With new large developments traffic on QA in that area during any busy time is backed up 1/3 mile.

18. Anyone advocating for this is a moron. Sorry. You either don’t live in the immediate area, don’t actually drive, or have no sense of traffic mess in that area. Also the numbers they used here conveniently was during a period of time where many people tried to avoid the Fremont bridge because of all the lane closures and construction. That bridge is a lifeline for many residents and businesses and closing it to cars is nothing but disastrous. The author to claim it would only add 5 minutes to the commute is absolutely ridiculous. I live on Westlake AVE N. To go from my resident to the freemont neighborhood currently takes on average 7 minutes assuming bridge is not in an open position and there are no lane closures. To do that same thing either via 99 which now has one less lane for cars both ways, depending on time of day, it would take an average of 20 more minutes. Thats not only a total waste of time but it will drive up delivery costs, cause a negative impact on businesses when patrons will choose to avoid the area, and for the ones environmentally conscious it will also be bad for the environment since you have cars on the road longer. Most people that are waiting for the bridge to open/close turn their car off. With the price of gas it’s insane not to do so. People voting to make us a car-less city are insane – for many Transit is not an option and biking in Seattle year-around is either not an option or just insane – I am saying this having biked from 164th in Lynnwood to 6th & Blanchard Downtown for over 5 years *before* bike lanes – just riding on the side of 99 every weekday except snow days.

    1. You live in the one place where a detour to the Aurora Bridge is most inconvenient. Very few, if any, delivery drivers (coming from say, Kent) would use the Fremont Bridge over the Aurora Bridge, though how many is worthy of more specific study. Most origins and destinations have a less inconvenient detour than Westlake to Fremont.

       And hey, if the 40 wasn’t stuck in traffic and unreliable as a result, maybe you’d be more inclined to take it the two miles from Westlake to Fremont.

       And you’re right, I don’t drive in the area, because I ride the bus in the area. So I am aware of the traffic issues insofar as they affect my ability to get to and through Fremont. Prioritizing buses over cars is a political choice, and one that Seattle has continually postured about doing. I’d like to see us follow through – assuming there are no debilitating issues found on closer study.

    2. If I lived on Westlake N, I wouldn’t even own a car. Why would you ever drive that route? Biking takes half the time, and you don’t have to worry about parking in Fremont, which takes 5 to 10 minutes itself.

    3. I find it funny when people write a full insult, and immediately follow it with “sorry”. If you were actually sorry, why not just delete it and go on with your post? Or do you think saying sorry makes it okay to levy insults? Just a very childish mentality.

       Anyways, SDOT has a goal of reducing the number of daily SOV trips by over 600,000, from 65% of all trips to 45%. To do that, it needs to be easier to walk, bike, or ride transit than to drive yourself. Freight is a different puzzle which Michael suggests could be allowed to cross via FAB lanes.

       If the most efficient travel method for an individual and their backpack/bag/purse is an SOV, then the city has failed. Cars are comfortable and can move a lot of stuff, but it should be more convenient to take the bus or bike or walk than to drive between any two given points in the city.

       Perpetuating SOV priority is shortsighted and moronic. “Sorry.”

    4. You are aware there has been a mostly completed interurban trail from Lynnwood to Seattle for at least 25 years, and partial for longer than that. I’d take an insult as a badge of honor from some brilliant fellow risking his life riding the shoulder of 99 when safe, pleasant alternatives existed.

       Sorry.

       1. Coincidentally, the Interurban Trail is on the pathway of the former Interurban, an intercity streetcar that connected Pioneer Square and Everett via Fremont and Greenwood. It died when Aurora and its bridge opened; it could not compete. Fremont Brewing sells an Interurban beer.

    5. If by “delivery drivers” you mean someone like a Dominos driver, then yes. It would take longer. Or, as the author suggested, it gets delivered by (electric) bike. This is increasingly common in New York — so much so it has become an annoyance. It is quite possible that a typical Doordash type delivery will be quicker by bike (as there is less of a hassle with parking).

       If by delivery drivers you mean those delivering freight (e. g. food to a grocery store) it is worth noting that this makes things better for them. They will be able to use the bus lanes. The same is true for emergency vehicles as well.

       It is worth noting that the trip you are talking about (Fremont to Westlake) is especially good by bus and by bike. Why the hell are you driving it? To get groceries? OK, except you can carry those on the bus (many people do). More to the point the trip you are describing — Westlake to Fremont that requires the carrying capacity of a car — is very rare.

       1. “If by delivery drivers you mean those delivering freight (e. g. food to a grocery store) it is worth noting that this makes things better for them. They will be able to use the bus lanes.”

          Are small delivery trucks like UPS and Amazon eligible for FAB lanes? I thought freight was just large trucks and wholesale goods movements.

    6. Preach on! The war on cars is real. Forcing people to take the method of transportation you choose is pretty ignorant and everyone has a different situation especially if they have children or are taking care of another person. I live on Aurora south of the bridge and the traffic is backed up all the time now since they made the bus only lane (I don’t disagree with the lane because of safety but it created more traffic). Sending people in circle is ridiculous and causes an excessive amount of waste. People pay taxes and deserve to drive on what they pay for, not your idea on what’s best. How many people are even using a bike in the winter compared to a car? Let just have an empty bridge in January while neighborhoods are piled up with cars that are forced to circle around them.

       1. How many people are even using a bike in the winter compared to a car? Let just have an empty bridge in January while neighborhoods are piled up with cars that are forced to circle around them.
          First of all, you’re asking the wrong question: it should be how many people are walking, scooting, taking the bus, and biking in the winter, since all of these groups are getting a raw deal compared to cars under the current arrangement. In any case, we can answer your question definitively: during the month of January 2025, the bike/scooter counter recorded 2,186 average weekday trips and the 31, 32, 40, and 60 had 18,983 average weekday boardings. Even if half of these boardings are after the bridge (which are still affected by bridge delays), tens of thousands of people in January is not “empty,” and I’m not even counting pedestrians.

          There were only 16,953 average car trips on the bridge from Nov. 6-12, 2025, a time when the weather was roughly as crappy as Jan. 2025. Even with an average 1.5 people per vehicle and not all bus riders on-board over the bridge, there are only a few thousand more people driving over the bridge vs other modes during the crappiest time of time of the year. This is not including the people who might switch to these modes (particularly bus) if riding them over the bridge was a good experience.

          People pay taxes and deserve to drive on what they pay for, not your idea on what’s best.
          Yes, and as I have shown, a significant portion of those taxpayers who use the bridge do not choose driving and are getting seriously shortchanged by the current bridge configuration and, unlike the ones who choose to drive, do not have multiple other bridges that are a few minutes away via their preferred mode of transportation.

          … Not to mention that almost 40% of the SDOT budget comes from property taxes. The 20% of the people in the city with no car pay for these directly or indirectly too.

       2. June Foamer,

          In all due respect, I believe your numbers are off.

          80% of all Seattle households own a car. Seattle also has high transit and bicycle usage. So many, I’d even argue most, households are riding transit AND driving in Seattle. You can’t pit transit riders vs. car users because they’re the same people.

       3. tacomee, care to point out which numbers are off? My numbers are from the November traffic study in the article, the SDOT bike counter page, and the KC Metro ridership dashboard.

          That 80% of people have a car is not a gotcha—did you even read my comment? I point this statistic out explicitly.

          Nowhere do I “pit” car owners against non-owners. One of the main points in my comment and in the article is that an SOV-free Fremont bridge would benefit many non-car trips and would at most only mildly inconvenience a similar or smaller number of car trips. This is not a zero-sum framing. Indeed, the whole reason I mention mode shift is because I think that many of the people taking car trips would be happy to switch some of the time if the non-car experience were better.

          Anyway, I agree that most car owners also take transit. This is why I talk about trip modes and not vehicle ownership in my comment, except wrt taxes. I do not even need to resort to speculation like you do to prove this point: in the 2024 Commute Seattle survey, 93% of respondents said they own a car, but only 33% of the reported trips in the “Fremont/Greenlake” survey zone involved driving alone. Another reason to think this proposal might be a success…

       4. You can’t pit transit riders vs. car users because they’re the same people.

          No one is pitting transit riders against car users. The basic premise of this post is that it would be better for most people, including people who drive. I know it sounds really crazy to think that closing the bridge to cars would be better for many who drive but that is only because we, as Americans, believe that any infrastructure that is available to drivers ultimately benefits society as a whole. Yet this is not true. Even from a driving standpoint it isn’t true. Driving is often a zero-sum game. Metered on-ramps make driving worse for those at those on-ramps but they make driving better for everyone else. If that occurs *just for driving* then something like this would be similar. Driving from Magnolia to SPU wouldn’t be so congested (drivers would slog their way over the Ballard Bridge instead). Those on the other side of the canal would likely benefit as well.

          This is all before you consider traffic evaporation (a real phenomenon — https://thecityfix.com/blog/traffic-evaporation-what-really-happens-when-road-space-is-reallocated-from-cars/). The point is, this would have winners and losers — just like every other automobile-related change. The multi-billion dollar boondoggle that is the Puget Sound Gateway will no doubt make life better for some drivers. But it will make life a lot worse for other drivers. Yet we don’t seem to freak out about this. It is only when we propose something that benefits mainly non-drivers (like this) that we think it is a battle between modes.

          To be clear, as I wrote in other comments, I wouldn’t make this change yet. I think it is very important to transition in the proper order (as best you can). Managing traffic like this is a bit like trying to clean up a major suds overflow (e. g. too much bubble bath added to the Jacuzzi). You are pushing at it from all sides. But attacking it like it is a fire just won’t work. You need to corral it and then slowly let it subside, bit by bit until all the bubbles are where you want them.

       5. “80% of all Seattle households own a car.”

          It’s less in Fremont. The Burke-Gilman Trail is right there. Not all car owners use their car for every trip.

    7. Dude, you must not go to “Freemont” very often or you would have noticed that there’s only one “e”.

19. Sorry, but no. As someone who’s both lived in and commuted to Fremont, Aurora is a mess during rush hour, especially the southbound right turn lane into Queen Anne. Adding traffic to those turns is a horrible idea. I don’t think it’s a viable alternative to the Fremont bridge.

    I could get behind limiting openings or giving buses a faster way through though.

20. Agreed. People like the author of this “hot take” are to blame for many of the “progressive” policies that have made middle class life, and in particular middle class family life, nearly impossible in this city.

21. Just dumb. Build a new bridge for pedestrians

    1. But the Fremont Bridge is in the best location for them. What would you think of the earlier idea of switching cars to a new bridge at 3rd Ave NW. Pedestrians have to be right at the village center because walking longer distances is a bigger burden for them. Cars can be a few blocks away because the driver just has to press the accelerator pedal.

22. Hey guys, “Congratulations!” This articles brought the lurkers out of the woodwork. Who knew that STB was read by so many reactionaries?

    1. Any proposal like this needs to be debated and get input from impacted residents, both non-drivers and drivers. I don’t know now many new commentators have been reading STB for a while vs how many saw a link to this article somewhere, or how many will stick around for other articles, but in any case we need the Fremont input, and information on the trip pairs that would be most adversely impacted by this.

       For instance, one person brought up driving from Fremont to a school on Queen Anne. I doubt many people do that, but we should look at better transit options for those kinds of trips. I wouldn’t keep the Fremont Bridge open for cars just for things like this, because we should aim for something better and more sustainable, but it shows more factors an ultimate solution should take into account.

       I still like the idea of extending a route like the 13 to N 50th Street. That would address the access issue with upper Queen Anne. Jack is concerned about the 13 already being long and congested. (The 13 is long? I wouldn’t have thought so, but Belltown and lower Queen Anne and the Counterbalance and the upper Queen Anne Village center are definitely congested.) A 40+13 transfer would require the 13 to be more frequent so that the transfer overhead isn’t such a large part of the total trip, and going such a short distance in Fremont just to transfer seems dubious. But all these are things that could be considered.

       1. Maybe the 13 could loop on Florentia rather than crossing the bridge? That would offer a new connection to the 62 and 40. Or maybe figure out a turnaround around 39th, which would add a connection to the 5.

          Heading all the way to 50th seems unnecessary; that adds a connection to the zoo and a transfer to the 44 but the zoo is not a major destination and many trip pairs along the 44 are served by the alternate routes (40, 62, and 31/32).

       2. The bus has to turn around and layover somewhere. Maybe it can do so in the city-owned zoo parking lot. Fremont Avenue is a hill, so it would be nice to have transit on Fremont Avenue between lower and upper Fremont.

23. What we really need are more ways to cross in general. I have never seen a city with so much water and so few bridges.

24. In general the Fremont Bridge is a testament to the usefulness of low bridges for transit, biking, and walking, and we should generally de-prioritize cars on the low bridges when it’s so much less painful for drivers to take higher bridges and double-back to waterside destinations than for any other users to do so. For transit in particular the Fremont Bridge is just in the right place. There’s no other place that would make more sense for those buses to cross.

    To me, the biggest reason not to close the Fremont Bridge to cars is that getting from the Aurora Bridge to any place on Westlake or Nickerson, and some places along Dexter, is really messy, and would send a bunch of traffic down routes that can’t handle it. I think we’d at least have to create some additional minor-arterial routes through Queen Anne and make changes to Dexter to accommodate more left turns. And we’d do all that in order to send more traffic to the last entrance before the Aurora Bridge northbound and the first exit after it southbound? Yikes! Cars on the Fremont Bridge seems like the lesser of two evils to me. I tend to think that, as driving is less prioritized on the bridge, that the last drivers to stick with the Fremont Bridge are going to be the ones that would otherwise have to take these kinds of routes that we don’t want more people taking… so we can go up to a point with it, but not the very last step, if that makes sense.

25. Let’s not forget that the Fremont Troll lived under that historic bridge.
    file:///var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/33/03/5F6C2D43-86D7-4CA2-B900-7A386B27F990/IMG_0631.png

26. I think that 35 times per day opening statistic for the fremont bridge is either decades out of date or just wrong somehow.

    It is what wipedia, and various other sources claim, however “SDOT Drawbridge Status” has every open/close for every drawbridge in the city and it has Fremont opening 3437 times from 1 Jan 2025 through 20 Dec 2025 or just under 10 times a day on average. Picking a few days it is unsurprisingly a lot higher during the summer.

    Truely nerding out: its under 200 a month oct-feb and ramps almost to 500 a month in August.

    1. the daily openings are seasonal; see sailboats.

       1. Sure, and I went as far as to plot the openings by month and observe that even the peak month of august only averages 16/day. In the winter its under 7/day. The entire year is 10/day.

          If you add up all the openings, for all four seattle drawbridges (Ballard, Fremont, University, Montlake, 1st ave S there were 10318 this almost complete year – 28/day.

          Looking at a few seattle times articles, etc it looks like there is a long slow decline in openings. So maybe 35/day for the fremont bridge was correct at some time pretty far in the past (60 years ago?) when there was a lot more tall boat traffic, or maybe the original statistic was for the entire system of draw bridges not so far in the past, or maybe it was 35/day in the summer 30 years ago. Or maybe the original number was openings + closings. Or maybe boats passing while open. According to SDOT’s data this year the maximum daily openings was 26 on July 2 and Sept 11. The minimum was 0 on a few days in the fall or winter and a two week block in sept/oct which I’m guessing is a data gap (maybe the sensor failed, maybe they were doing work and turned it off).

          So other explanations?

          Seems unlikely that the open/close sensors fail to register 2/3 of openings.

          SDOTs website says its an automatic logging system which might register too many openings if the operator has to make a couple attempts to get the bridge to close correctly, and that the sensor could fail. The latter may have happened in september for two weeks and presumably does bump the averages up 4% or so.

    2. Oh and I don’t think this matters to the thesis of the essay. The number just seemed wrong to me, so I looked into it

    3. I believe you. I don’t think it opens that often these days. The eastbound marine traffic is metered by Ballard Lock. I don’t think Ballard Lock opens 35 times a day, so there is no reason to open 35 times a day even in the middle of the sailing season.

27. Yeargh, I don’t know. I’m in favor of Not Making It Harder To Get To Ballard For The Love Of God.

    And we don’t necessarily have to choose between these things but if I were to prioritize one Seattle bridge to improve for cyclists and pedestrians, it would 100% be the Ballard bridge. The Fremont bridge just seems unimportant on comparison, especially from a cyclist’s perspective.

    1. The Ballard Bridge also severely needs a rework, but the bicycle network on both ends is nowhere near as cohesive as the network on each end of the Fremont Bridge.

       Significant transit additional transit capacity is coming to Ballard in the next ~15 years (hopefully), but more road capacity is not coming to Fremont any time soon. Meanwhile, getting cars out of the way of the 40 and cyclists would make it easier to get to Ballard by any means other than driving.

28. Closing the Fremont Bridge for car traffic is a fantastic idea. It certainly help making public transit or bike riding much more safe and convenient and therefore encourage more people to take those modes of transportation.

    I take the route from Fremont to South Lake Union on my bike multiple times a week. The bridge and the crossing of N34th St and Fremont Ave is always confusing, unpleasant and borderline dangerous to navigate by bike:

    1. Southbound, if I stay on the west side of the bridge the bike lane ends after the bridge and I need to use a sidewalk or get stuck behind cars on the Florentia St stub as I try to loop down to the canal. If instead I bike along the east side of the bridge I go against other bikes and bother pedestrians.
    2. Northbound, past the bridge there is dangerous merging with cars that want to turn right on N34th St. There is also no safe way to continue North on Fremont Ave at this point.

29. Terrible idea. Fremont bridge is what connects QA to Fremont psychologically. It’s also the easiest way to get to UW Montlake and University Bridge from QA.

    Forcing all the traffic to Aurora where there is already a huge bottleneck in QA is just simply not good traffic planning. It provides no redundancy and resilience.

30. This would face so much backlash that it would set back any future efforts for bike and pedestrian access for years. And the idea that it will magically force people to ride the bus is a fantasy.

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