bikeseattle.org

[image courtesy of brappy]

Traffic could choke for 30 miles, all the way south to Tacoma, in the state Department of Transportation’s worst-case scenario for renovation of a crucial stretch of northbound Interstate 5.

The work of repaving 1.13 miles of the freeway, and repairing or replacing key areas, starts late Friday night and is scheduled to end Aug. 29.

–Full article (Seattle PI)

I’m full of opinions this week it seems, but I’ll keep my “1.3 miles of construction could cause 30 miles of backup and we don’t need a mass-transit system?!” one to myself.

What this is for is to help out anyone who is considering getting on a bike to try to navigate around for the next few weeks should you choose to do so. Keep in mind that most of these links below can be found within the navigation up at the top.

The first order of business is going to be either getting a bike, or getting your current bike tuned-up. Check out the Seattle area bike shops and find one near you. Unfortunately, chances are if you’re reading this now and you do need a tune-up, it may be a few days before your bike is ready.

Now that your bike is ready, it’s time to get you ready. If you’re new to the bike (or are returning after an extended absence) it’s time to brush up on some reading. First, read up on how you can ride better. Also, learn the rules of the road for our state regarding bicycling (also from a driver’s perspective). Just in case, here’s how to load/unload your bike from a Metro bus (did you know you can get across 520 with a bike?). If you’re new to riding on any of the bike trails around, be sure to learn some trail etiquette.

I’ll also highly recommend getting a copy of The Art of Urban Cycling and reading that this weekend. Don’t worry, it’s a fairly quick read and well worth it.

The next step is to determine your route. There are decent routes into downtown Seattle from pretty much any direction. From the north you can use the Burke Gilman trail to get you across the Fremont Bridge and up Dexter Ave into downtown. From the east is the I-90 trail trail. There’s a trail all along Alki which goes near/under the West Seattle Bridge which then heads north parallel to 99 all the way into downtown. For any other route consideration, you can get electronic copies of all King County maps.

Finally, if you’re curious how the actual construction is going, here’s the WS-DOT live update website.