Do you primarily bike to work or to other places as well?
Personally, like other “Interested but concerned” riders, I only feel comfortable using relatively safe infrastructure like greenways, protected bike lanes, and off-road paths. Looking at this bike map of Seattle, that infrastructure isn’t available east of Lake Washington. In the downtown and university areas it looks like there is some of that infrastructure available but that it is disconnected enough to make it difficult to get to many destinations by bike.
This all makes me think that Seattle is a difficult place to get around by bike for even an “Enthused and confident” rider and that you’d need to be “Strong and fearless”, but I’m not sure.
I only really bike to work and occasionally to Woodinville.
The Eastrail page has a decent map of full-separated bike trails (not just separate lanes), although it’s annoying that some of the trails are “highlighted” in grey.
The green trail north/south through Kirkland, and all of the grey trails following 520 and then north up to Woodinville are bike paths (not bike lanes, totally separated). They occasionally cross roads but it’s infrequent. My house is (intentionally) along the 520 path so I can bike to work entirely on small neighborhood streets + the bike path.
I guess my post is targeted to people who already know they want to bike but don’t know if they want an e-bike. I should mention that not everyone is going to be happy biking here though. Kirkland is pretty good for biking if bike lanes are good enough for you, and Redmond is weird but mostly fine. Bellevue is mostly suicidal to try to bike through (except along 520).
I also updated the title since I mostly don’t talk about Seattle.
Do you primarily bike to work or to other places as well?
Personally, like other “Interested but concerned” riders, I only feel comfortable using relatively safe infrastructure like greenways, protected bike lanes, and off-road paths. Looking at this bike map of Seattle, that infrastructure isn’t available east of Lake Washington. In the downtown and university areas it looks like there is some of that infrastructure available but that it is disconnected enough to make it difficult to get to many destinations by bike.
This all makes me think that Seattle is a difficult place to get around by bike for even an “Enthused and confident” rider and that you’d need to be “Strong and fearless”, but I’m not sure.
I only really bike to work and occasionally to Woodinville.
The Eastrail page has a decent map of full-separated bike trails (not just separate lanes), although it’s annoying that some of the trails are “highlighted” in grey.
The green trail north/south through Kirkland, and all of the grey trails following 520 and then north up to Woodinville are bike paths (not bike lanes, totally separated). They occasionally cross roads but it’s infrequent. My house is (intentionally) along the 520 path so I can bike to work entirely on small neighborhood streets + the bike path.
I guess my post is targeted to people who already know they want to bike but don’t know if they want an e-bike. I should mention that not everyone is going to be happy biking here though. Kirkland is pretty good for biking if bike lanes are good enough for you, and Redmond is weird but mostly fine. Bellevue is mostly suicidal to try to bike through (except along 520).
I also updated the title since I mostly don’t talk about Seattle.