Making Fairview Avenue E. safer for pedestrians, part 1: the 9 blocks from Newton St. to Fuhrman Ave.
Fairview Avenue E. is one of the best things about the Eastlake neighborhood, a quiet, leafy place to walk and to enjoy the lake. Fairview is enjoyed not only by those who live or work here, but also by visitors from all over the region–most of them on foot or bicycle–who come for the water views, paddler access, street-end parks, marine businesses, picturesque houseboat colony, etc.
The combination of residents, businesses, cyclists, and tourists that use Fairview would in itself be a complicated traffic situation. But the situation is made dangerous by drivers seeking Fairview as a bypass, especially now that simultaneous multiyear construction projects are now rebuilding Eastlake Avenue and repairing nearby parts of the I-5 freeway. Fairview desperately needs improvements allowing pedestrians, bicycles, local traffic, and public parking to coexist safely while solving drainage and flooding problems that can block those on foot or who are trying to park.
In 1994 with funds from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and in cooperation with the Seattle Department of Transportation, a steering committee of resident and business representatives staffed by the Eastlake Community Council developed the Eastlake Transportation Plan and Related Design Issues, which is available by clicking here. This 1994 Plan recommended separated walkways for the parts of Fairview Avenue East that are south of E. Newton Street and north of E. Hamlin Street. It also recommended that the four blocks of Fairview between Newton and Roanoke streets he few separated walkways, but rather that these blocks mainly be traffic calmed to allow pedestrians to mix safely with bicycles and motor vehicles.
Also in 1994, the Mayor and City Council adopted a new citywide Comprehensive Plan, a central part of which was to designate Eastlake as one of 27 urban villages, and to fund a neighborhood plan for each of them. Under strict performance standards enforced by the Seattle Office of Neighborhood Planning, a steering committee of resident and business representatives and other stakeholders (again staffed by the Eastlake Community Council) developed the 1998 Eastlake Neighborhood Plan. The part of this plan regarding Fairview built upon the earlier Eastlake Transportation Plan. It asked,the City of Seattle to designate as a Green Street the four blocks of Fairview between Fuhrman Avenue and Hamlin Street, and the five blocks of Fairview between Roanoke and Newton streets. The City agreed, and did so in 1998 by enacting Ordinance 119322. (In this ordinance, the Green Street designation was just one of several actions by which the City implemented the Eastlake Neighborhood Plan).
Over the years the City has changed its procedures regarding green streets several times, requiring the Eastlake neighborhood to retrace its steps in finalizing the street design concept plan. Ordinance 119322 designated as a Green Street Type III (at that time meaning that motor vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles would coexist in the roadway). Within three years of passing the ordinance that designated the Fairview Green Street, in Mayor and City Council repealed the parts of the Seattle Municipal Code that (without any notice to or consultation with the affected neighborhoods) repealed much of what the Seattle Municipal Code said about green streets, including the distinction among the three types; and gave more discretion over green streets to joint rules adopted the directors of the Department of Transportation and the Department Construction and Inspections.
Green streets are no longer designated by ordinance, and the Seattle Department of Transportation (via its Right-of-Way Improvements Manual) now now addresses Green Streets administratively, through the Right-of-Way Improvements Manual and with the Department of Construction and Inspections through joint directors’ rules that approve for each Green Street a design concept plan that protects it from unwise changes based on general standards for areas where the automobile dominates, and also helps the Green Street qualify for City-funded and developer-funded improvements.
In order to develop a green street design concept plan for Fairview, after the green street;s designation by Ordinance 119322 in 1998, over almost two decades the Eastlake Community Council has sponsored many public meetings, public workshops, public tours, and advisory meetings, and issued many draft documents for public comment. Hundreds of Eastlake residents, business people, and property owners over a period of many years have made suggestions–whether in letters, drawings, e-mails, (many of which are quoted or summarized in a later section below) and at public meetings.
Every one of the comments was considered in producing the current draft, which came out of discussions among hundreds of volunteers (including surveyor Johann Wassermann and landscape designer Meredith Sessions, each of whom contributed countless hours in producing the final draft). To develop the current draft Fairview Green Street Design Concept Plan, ECC worked hard to identify and resolve any major questions and concerns from the public prior. Because the street design concept plan is a compromise, no one involved will find everything in it exactly to their wishes. What is most important is to find a plan that the largest number of Eastlakers will agree with, and which the directors of the the Seattle Department of Transportation and of the Department of Construction and Inspections can adopt as a joint director’s rule.
This web page about the Fairview Green Street and its street design concept plan, begins with links to the key documents and sources, then presents an overview of why Fairview needs to be a Green Street, and about the policies and physical improvements that this involves. For questions, comments, or suggestions, please write to info@EastlakeInfo.net.
KEY DOCUMENTS AND SOURCES ABOUT FAIRVIEW AVENUE AND ITS ‘NEIGHBORHOOD GREEN STREET’ STATUS
Eastlake Transportation Plan (1994): click here
Eastlake Neighborhood Plan (1998): Click here for the plan. Click here here for the 1999 Approval and Adoption matrix which embodied the actual decision by the Mayor and City Council.
Seattle Ordinance 119322 Click here. This 1998 ordinance designated as a Green Street the segments of Fairview Avenue E. between Fuhrman Ave. E. and E. Hamlin St. and between t E. Roanoke St. and E. Newton St. One of many actions that the City took as a result of the 1998 Eastlake Neighborhood Plan.
The Fairview Green Street Design Concept Plan itself:
The prose description of the proposed design elements: click here. for a .
The graphic version of the plan is in two parts (click on each to reach the documents): (1) the segment between Newton and Roanoke streets; and (2) the segment between Hamlin St. and Fuhrman Ave. (for #2 without the photo overlay, click here.
Note: The north and south segments of the Fairview Green Street Design Concept Plan look different because the south segment is overlaid on a professional topographic and land survey donated by Johann Wassermann. Lacking a topographic and land survey for the north segment, we relied on geographic information system (GIS) overlays from the City of Seattle that are the next best thing. The photo overlay can help locate various features that would be pinpointed on a topographic and land survey. The photo overlay does not cover the parts of Fairview Ave. E. and Fuhrman Ave. E. that are under the freeway and thus not seen by aerial photography.
Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop Master Plan (2009). Click here for the plan, here for the appendices, or here for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation web site for the Cheshiahud Loop which has these documents as well as a downloadable map of the route around the lake. The Parks Department and the Seattle Department of Transportation jointly and with the assistance of the Seattle Parks Foundation, issued the dCheshiahud Lake Union Loop Master Plan. As Eastlake’s own planning efforts had earlier concluded, the City planners placed the walking and bicycle route mainly on the Fairview roadway for the nine blocks of Fairview between E. Newton St. and and Fuhrman Avenue E..
Documents about the plan’s transmission to the City and about the City’s its and City consideration of it:
January 22, 2016 e-mail by which the Eastlake Community Council submitted the Fairview Green Street design concept plan to the City of Seattle: (click here.
April 2017 letter from the Eastlake Community Council to then-City Councilmember Rob Johnson asking for his help in getting the City departments to review and act on the Fairview Green Street design concept plan: click here.
Suggestions made between 1999 and 2005 for planning guidelines and street design concepts on the Fairview Green Stree
Click here for the document][/b] Between 1999 and 2005, committees composed of people who lived, worked, or owned property in the Eastlake neighborhood developed draft guidelines for the two Fairview Green Street segments. Deepest thanks go out to every one of these many volunteers for their efforts. Their drafts are provided here as background for the current street design concept plan that has been submitted for City consideration.
MAKING IT SAFER FOR PEDESTRIANS ON THE FAIRVIEW “NEIGHBORHOOD GREEN STREET” [THE NINE BLOCKS NORTH OF NEWTON ST.)
While not the only neighborhood lucky enough to be by a lake, Eastlake is one of the few with a waterfront road—Fairview Avenue East—on which vehicle traffic is low enough for those on foot to safely get to the water and walk along the bank. A further plus: Fairview’s right-of-way mostly extends into the lake, keeping the shoreline in public ownership.
To everyone in Eastlake and beyond, Fairview provides visual and/or physical access to Lake Union: parks, viewpoints, open water, paddler launch sites, boats, piers, docks, fishing spots, marine businesses, floating homes, seaplanes, and more.
How close we came to losing it all! In 1927, City officials considered turning Fairview into a six-lane state highway by partially filling in the lake. A 1970 City local improvement district expanding parts of Fairview to four lanes was stopped only through last-minute organizing by the Floating Homes Association (FHA), which continued its concern for Fairview in the ensuing decades.
The Eastlake Community Council (ECC) was founded in 1971 in part out of concern for shoreline access and keeping Fairview a “country road”. Over the years, ECC has put more effort into protecting Fairview Avenue and its shoreline, and making them safer and more accessible for pedestrians, than on any other neighborhood issue.
For years, Fairview Avenue E. remained officially an arterial, and therefore still vulnerable to expansion. Thanks to further neighborhood efforts, Seattle now classifies it as a low-volume and low-speed “urban village neighborhood access street.” (To its south, the wider Fairview Avenue N., a major vehicle, bus, and cycle route to downtown, is properly classified as a “principal arterial.”)
Generations of neighborhood planning and public engagement efforts have brought safety improvements to Fairview and laid out more that are still needed: Eastlake Goals and Policies (1974-79, City Council acknowledged), Eastlake Tomorrow neighborhood planning (1991-94, first use of the “walking fish” meme), Eastlake Transportation Plan (1994), Fairview Traffic Calming Project (1995-96, led by FHA), Eastlake Neighborhood Plan (1996-99, adopted by the Mayor and City Council), South Fairview pathway and landscaping project (1996-2000), Fairview Green Street design guidelines project (1999-2013) and Fairview Green Street design concept plan (2014 to present and ongoing).
This decades-long effort has mobilized the neighborhood and the public agencies. Local businesses and experts, and UW studio courses, made crucial in-kind donations such as designs and land surveys. The City of Seattle, Washington State Traffic Safety Commission, and Bullitt Foundation provided planning funds. But easily the largest resource has been the time and effort of hundreds of volunteers and more than a thousand Eastlake residents and business people who filled out opinion surveys.
The neighborhood conversation has recognized distinct segments of Fairview, each needing tailored solutions, but always to include capital improvements either physically changing the roadway for pedestrians to be safer walking in it, or in some places to build for them a separate, parallel walkway.
In the Fairview Green Street design concept plan, the term “walkway” is used rather than “sidewalk.” The walkway category can include a sidewalk, but the term is broader. Sidewalks are subject to City regulations that define their width and generally require them to be straight. A walkway can be winding rather than straight and can be of varying widths. In the street design concept plan, any walkway or sidewalk is to be accessible under the guidelines of the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act. On Fairview, this means that it will be paved. In contrast, a “trail” could have a soft or gravel surface that is not wheelchair-friendly.
On Fairview, some safety improvements of the traffic calming type and of the walkway type have each been built, but others of both categories are still urgently needed for pedestrians to be truly safe. This section of the web site covers the north and middle segments of Fairview Avenue E. because the City of Seattle classifies that part of Fairview as a Green Street, and more specifically as a Neighborhood Green Street). [A separate section of this web site is now in preparation about the south segment of Fairview (between Newton St. and Fairview Avenue N.), which the City does not classify as a Green Street. When that section is ready, a link to it will be provided here.]
Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund (Department of Neighborhoods) is a competitive process offering amounts smaller than $50,000 for improvements such as traffic calming and walkways; projects of either kind can each cost considerably more than that amount.
The Fairview Green Street is also eligible for other and larger sources of funds. The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has made road improvements adjacent to some of its shoreline parks along Fairview and Fuhrman avenues. That Department should also make improvements in between these parks, as its Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop follows the entire length of Fairview Avenue E., plus the segment of Fuhrman Avenue E. that connects Fairview with Eastlake Avenue and the University Bridge.
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has a $1.55 billion levy (voter-approved in November 2024) that includes funds specifically for traffic safety and calming. Funds for pedestrian access and safety are also available from the millions a year that SDOT collects from permittees for private use of shoreline street-sides and street-ends, including some rights-of-way that are under water.
SDOT, acting jointly with the Department of Construction and Inspections (DCI), can also require developers to pay for traffic calming improvements in the adjacent roadway. And donors (including developers and landowners) can contribute to Fairview improvements. For all the above, volunteers are needed in sourcing and applying.
As recommended by the Eastlake Neighborhood Plan, in 1998 the Mayor and City Council enacted Ordinance 119322 which gave one of Seattle’s earliest Green Street designations to Fairview’s north segment (five blocks between the Ship Canal/Fuhrman Ave. and Hamlin St.), and to its middle segment (four blocks between Roanoke and Newton streets). SDOT later created a separate category of Green Street called a Neighborhood Green Street, and gave that designation to the Fairview Green Street. “Neighborhood Green Streets” are defined in its Seattle Right-of-Way Improvements Manual as streets that “emphasize pedestrian amenities, landscaping, historic character elements, traffic calming, and other unique features.”
Years of further planning and public input produced a Fairview Green Street design concept plan which is posted on the ECC web site as well as on the present EastlakeInfo.net web site (see links in a nearby section). Elements applying to both Fairview segments include the following: (1) pedestrian-scale lighting; (2) maintain or increase on-street parking; and (3) improve drainage on the road, on walkways, and in public parking areas (at some locations, pooling persists on the roadway and in parking areas because of a lack of storm drains).
For both segments, the street design concept plan also prescribes the following traffic signs: (1) along Fairview: “Pedestrian Area – 15 mph”; and (2) on cross streets approaching Fairview, and on Fairview just past where drivers enter: “Motorists and cyclists: 15 mph limit. Please exercise caution. Entering pedestrian area.” On page 42 of the 1999 document by which the Mayor and City Council adopted the Eastlake Neighborhood Plan, SDOT committed to post signs with a recommended 15 mph speed on Fairview between Roanoke and Newton streets.
North segment of Fairview (between Fuhrman Ave. and Hamlin St.). This segment mostly lacks stop signs at the intersections. The Fairview Green Street design concept plan calls for all-way stop signs at all three (the intersections with Fuhrman Ave., Allison St., and Hamlin St.). And to make sure the stop signs are heeded, the plan calls for these intersections to be raised, reconfigured, textured, and made smaller with curbing—a classic method in the “traffic calming” toolbox of engineers and designers.
In 2007 as the neighborhood was in the early stages of developing the Fairview Green Street design concept plan, a major opportunity for privately funded improvements arose. Wards Cove Packing Company decided to redevelop its historic moorage and shipyard into a marina, a dock for twelve new floating homes, and adjacent parking, with townhouses on the upland side. The street design concept was still in development and not yet submitted to the City, so it was in no sense mandatory. But Wards Cove nevertheless volunteered to fund the improvements recommended for its vicinity. The company worked with the neighborhood on a redesign of the Fairview/Hamlin intersection and of the nearly full block of Fairview to the north.
Completed in 2009, these physical improvements on the Fairview right-of-way include a bend in the roadway to slow traffic, and a wide landscaped shoreline walkway with a rain garden. But reflecting that SDOT and DCI had not (as to this day, they still have not) formally adopted a Fairview Green Street design concept plan, these agencies nevertheless required that the roadway be wider than the community and Wards Cove’s wished.
North of the Wards Cove improvements of Fairview, the block and a half to Allison St. is narrower, naturally discouraging speeding. Fairview Park (opened in the year 2000) which straddles both Fairview Ave. and the undeveloped Shelby Street, parallels Fairview with a walkway on the upland side of Fairview Ave. and a pedestrian refuge on part of the lake side. The street design concept plan calls for a walkway to continue on the east (upland) side for the half-block north from the park to Allison. The bank is too narrow for a walkway on the lake side.
North of Allison St., the Fairview pavement is wider, so separate walkways on both sides of Fairview are called for in the street design concept plan. Part of the eastern (upland) walkway was recently built as part of the new Flow Eastlake apartments.
The Green Street draft design guidelines (2002) and since 2016 the street design concept plan proposed construction of public stairs connecting Fairview and Eastlake avenues via the undeveloped Martin St. right-of-way. Although not required to do so, the Flow Eastlake apartments developers engineered, built, and landscaped these steps for all to enjoy.
The land along the east side of Fairview further north to Fuhrman Avenue E. is owned by the State of Washington as I-5 right-of-way. Pedestrians following the Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop at this intersection have no walkway on either side of Fairview, and they face great danger. The Washington State Department of Transportation can afford to install on its property a paved walkway on the east side of Fairview Ave. and on the south side of Fuhrman Ave.
With the massive Eastlake Avenue reconstruction project now in progress, SDOT is occasionally using parts of this north segment of Fairview as a detour. At many other times, drivers seeking to avoid congestion on Eastlake Ave. are increasingly diverting to this segment of Fairview, and at far more than the 15-20 mph that SDOT directs for its status as an urban village neighborhood access street. Before someone is killed, it is urgent for SDOT to post speed limit signs, and to fund traffic calming measures, especially at the curving and uncontrolled intersection of Fairview and Fuhrman avenues, so that vehicles and cyclists can see ahead the need to slow down and stop.
Middle segment of Fairview (between Roanoke St. and Newton St.). When in 2010 the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department created the pedestrian Cheshiahud Loop around Lake Union, it adopted the route on the fourteen blocks of Fairview that our neighborhood had mapped out years before. The middle and north segments of Fairview Avenue E. are the only parts of the entire Loop for which pedestrians mostly have no separate walkway and thus need to use the roadway itself.
Protecting and improving pedestrian safety on this four-block segment has inherent advantages but also faces difficult tradeoffs. Although the Fairview right-of-way extends into the water, much of the bank is narrow, allowing a paved road barely wide enough for oncoming cars to pass one another. Geography contributes natural traffic calming that at these locations tends to benefit pedestrians.
Intersections are a chance to get drivers and cyclists to stop, and so the Fairview Green Street design concept plan for this segment calls for all-way stop signs at all intersections (with Newton, Boston, Lynn, and Roanoke streets). It also recommends that these intersections be narrowed, raised, textured, and made smaller with curbing to induce drivers to stop and for pedestrians to be more visible.
Some other parts of this segment of Fairview are so wide that drivers and cyclists tend to speed. The street design concept plan calls for these stretches to be narrowed. That can be achieved with parallel parking where now prohibited (a fallible solution when the spaces are not parked up), and by replacing pavement with landscaped areas protected by curbing. In the meantime, we need those 15 mph signs that, as mentioned above, SDOT promised the Mayor, City Council, and neighborhood in 1999.
Significant traffic calming improvements are in place, or about to be, at the Newton St. intersection. In constructing their national headquarters many years ago, the family-owned Merrill Gardens and Pillar Properties firms, without being required to by SDOT and DCI, built on the SE corner a very large landscaped corner to narrow the intersection. Now on the SW and NW sides of this intersection, the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department is about to expand Terry Pettus Park by bending and further narrowing the Fairview roadway.
The most dangerous intersection in this segment of Fairview is with Roanoke. Speeding downhill and facing no stop sign or channelization, motorists and cyclists dangerously curve left onto Fairview. They can’t see ahead to the pedestrians, who can’t see them. Stop signs are urgently needed, but the intersection needs to be rebuilt according to traffic calming principles so that vehicles and cyclists can see ahead the need to slow down and stop.
While enabling pedestrians to safely use the roadway for most of this segment of Fairview, the Green Street design concept plan has a separated walkway in two places. One is between the Roanoke and Louisa street-end parks. Here Fairview has very wide pavement and no obvious boundary with a large public parking area. Vehicles are everywhere, with no safe place for pedestrians.
The plan calls for walkways on both sides of this block of Fairview. The one on the west side would, at its ends, enter each park. At the Roanoke street-end, the walkway would be protected from oncoming traffic by extending outward the existing highway-type metal corrugated barrier.
The other separated walkway recommended for this Fairview segment is a short one on the lake side of the Boston street-end. As at the Roanoke street-end park, a highway-type corrugated metal barrier prevents out-of-control vehicles from ditching in the lake. But at the Boston street-end, the barrier also squeezes pedestrians into the line of traffic. The Fairview Green Street design concept plan two possible solutions: (1) a catwalk (cantilevered walkway offering a nice view of Lake Union) just west of the barrier; or (2) a walkway on the west edge of the current pavement, protected by a barrier and a sign to drivers in both directions: “one lane road—yield to oncoming traffic”.
When the 1994 Eastlake Transportation Plan considered this Fairview segment, Steering Committee member Richard Haag (1924-2018, renowned landscape architect and designer of Gas Works Park) proposed a pedestrian walkway located to the west (on the lake side of Fairview). Haag stressed that the right-of-way is best used for the public benefit of shoreline access.
In his proposed walkway, Haag was outvoted by the other members, who countered that adjacent residents would object to the loss of parking, and that it was more politically feasible to calm motor vehicle traffic on the roadway so that pedestrians would be safe walking there.
And indeed, to the west (nearest the lake) there were and still are many public, head-in parking spaces depended on by houseboaters. A pedestrian pathway on the west side of Fairview could eliminate many spaces, although there would be room for some to be converted to parallel parking, reducing the risk of a driver backing into a pedestrian or cyclist.
Where the bank is unusually narrow, Haag’s separated walkway could jeopardize private parking and loading spaces which a few houseboat docks have on the public right-of-way. And some dumpsters and small permitted structures would need relocation.
That was 30 years ago. Since then, not as much of the promised progress has been made in calming the traffic on Fairview. Meanwhile, the dangers to pedestrians have grown. As with the north segment, this middle segment of Fairview is already suffering increasing cut-through traffic from the early stages of Eastlake Avenue reconstruction, traffic which will only get worse as the project becomes more disruptive. which is minor in its early stages compared to what is in store.
And vehicles are larger, faster, and quieter, posing greater dangers. More drivers (and cyclists, e-bikers and scooterists) are speeding, increasingly heedless of pedestrians. All need to keep to 15 mph, and for that we can’t just rely on SDOT’s speed signs (which were originally installed in small numbers, and soon began to disappear). Modifying the roadway with traffic calming measures is essential.
Public parking on the west side of Fairview is becoming more vulnerable to wholesale loss as the chances increase for Parks officials to conclude that with the Fairview Green Street still lacking sufficient traffic calming measures, the Cheshiahud Loop must have a separate public walkway on the west side of Fairview.
Meanwhile, by failing to adopt (with any needed changes) the Fairview Green Street design concept plan as a joint director’s rule, SDOT and DCI are stuck with enforcing Seattle’s one-size-fits-all street standards on agencies and developers alike. Through City action, existing parking spaces are being eliminated, to be replaced by sidewalks that go nowhere. We are going in the opposite direction of a more walkable Fairview roadway.
The decades of effort to make Fairview Avenue E. safe for pedestrians and to make its shoreline accessible to them has involved extensive public outreach, with many options thoroughly considered, and consensus built among disparate interests and philosophies. Many elements of the plan have been implemented even without formal endorsement of a Green Street design concept plan by City officials. Revisions in the current plan can be made if merited by further agency and community input.
Do the people of Eastlake and their leaders have the commitment to make the Fairview roadway truly safe for pedestrians? Achieving pedestrian safety on the Fairview roadway is not feasible unless ECC and FHA, the community organizations that represent those most affected, rise to the challenge. At the least, they must get the directors of SDOT and DCI to adopt as a joint director’s rule, with any needed changes, the Fairview Green Street design concept plan. And they must be entrepreneurial in seeking traffic calming and walkway construction funds from the many possible public agencies and private sources. Only then will Fairview become truly and safely walkable.