Detours on southbound West Lake Sammamish Parkway went into effect this week as the city of Bellevue began work on road upgrades and the first segment of a multi-use paved trail that eventually will run between Redmond city limits and Interstate 90.
Diagram of future West Lake Sammamish Blvd. with multi-use trail
The city is upgrading the road and building the bicycle-pedestrian trail one mile at a time.
Currently, the section of West Lake Sammamish Parkway between Southeast 34th Street to just north of the Interstate 90 roundabout will be closed to southbound traffic until about October.
Southbound bicyclists can use Southeast 34th Street and the I-90 bike trail to get to Newport Way or the traffic round-about just north of I-90 at Sunset Elementary School to continue their journeys.
See the detour maps below.
Improvements
This is an improvement that’s been a long time coming. The West Lake Sammamish Parkway was identified as a primary north-south bicycle corridor in the 2009 Bike-Ped Report.
Currently, West Lake Sammamish Parkway is two lanes of traffic with a wide shoulder on the west side of the road and no shoulder on the east (lake) side.
On maps, that west side shoulder is marked for north and southbound bicycle traffic. Northbound bicyclists must either take the lane or use the “wrong” side of the road on the shoulder.
According to the 2009 Bike-Ped Plan (page 165), the West Lake Sammamish Parkway improvements call for:
- 10-foot wide vehicle travel lanes in each direction
- 4-foot wide continuous paved shoulder on the east side of the parkway (“…no formal bike lane markings, but it can be used by faster cyclists traveling northbound…. This east side … paved shoulder would be sign for no parking”)
- 10-foot multi-use path on the west side. Portions separated from vehile lanes by 2- to 5-foot-wide landscape plantings
- 5 mid-block crossings
- New traffic signal at West Lake Sammamish Parkway and Southeast 34th Street
For more information about bicycling improvements underway in Bellevue, check out the Bicycle – Pedestrian Plan website.
The work has been split into five segments of approximately 1-mile each; this first one should be complete by October. There’s no money budgeted for the next one-mile section, so it’s anybody’s guess when the other phases will proceed.
West Lake Sammamish Parkway detour alternate 1
The route above can be used by cyclists heading south on West Lake Sammamish Parkway then east on Newport Way toward Issaquah.
West Lake Sammamish Parkway detour alternate 2
This route can be used for cyclists heading south on West Lake Sammamish Parkway who want to continue on the parkway after the detour. It uses the I-90 bike trail all the way to the traffic circle just north of I-90, where it continues on West Lake Sammamish Parkway.
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