Riding Westlake Avenue

There is much political maneuvering in Seattle over the best way to fix a way for bicyclists to travel the route between South Lake Union and Fremont. All "solutions" involve alignments through a parking lot. 
There have been rumblings about having the new cycle track built with a design speed limit of 10 mph. Between pedestrians crossing, cars backing out of parking spaces, and poor sightlines, it is going to be a mess no matter how they decide to fix.........a problem that doesn't exist.

Julie and I were planning to ride to the Museum of History and Industry located in South Lake Union and decided to start at Gasworks Park to allow a flat ride since Julie is nursing an injured knee.  It was a perfect opportunity to pedal the section of road that many view with fear.

On the way out, slightly downhill, and with a brisk tailwind, we were moving along in the very high teens.  There wasn't enough traffic passing us to make a video worth watching.  After visiting the museum we traced our route back, this time slightly uphill and into that same wind.  Julie's frail knee kept us in the low teens.  Still we had no trouble taking our place as traffic in the lane.



After watching the above video, then take a look at the photo below of what conditions might have been like if we had taken the route through the parking lot (as a major bike club in Seattle would have us do)

Where would you prefer to ride?

By taking our legal position as traffic, in the center of the lane rather than hugging the edge we were more visible.  While not every car driver might have liked us there, they all saw us, and they all changed lanes to pass.  If we had hugged the gutter they may not have seen us as they focused on the vehicle ahead of them, and most would  have tried to squeeze by in the same lane.


..........road bike..........rollers........mtb.........lifecycle....total Today...........12...............0..............0...............0.............12 Jan............710................0..............0...............0...........710
Feb........... 578...............0..............0...............0............578
March ...........701.............0..............0...............0............701
April..........749.................0..............0...............0..........749
May...........613.................0..............0...............0...........613
June............309...............0..............0...............0...........309
July...............615...............0..............0...............0............615
August.........359................0..............0...............0.............359
 Sept............271................0...............0...............0.............271 Total..........4813...............0..............0...............0..........4813