Biking Seattle

I have discovered a universal truth. This is based on my experience in two cities, and I believe a sample size of two is the point at which Internet protocol requires you to make gross generalizations. The truth is this: the best maps to get a sense of a city are that city’s bike maps.

Seattle, like my previous home of Washington, D.C., publishes an official bike map. You can get a map for free at bike shops, find it online as a PDF or if you’d like to support the postal service the city will mail you a free copy on request. One way or another, get yourself one. Even if you don’t bike, it’s one of the best city maps you’ll see.

The bike maps in both cities manage a scale that balances detail with overview. They tend to be fairly large to encompass the whole city, and focus on the street-level realities better than the average highway map, which is more concerned with letting you know how to get your car from one place to another. In order to fit the entire city, they don’t have the full detail a neighborhood map would – other than a few bike-related businesses, there aren’t many shops listed. The main sights and major buildings are there, but the lines stay clean. What the maps do very well is give you a sense of the streets and connections of a city. How areas bleed into one another, where the main arteries are (and whether those arteries are to be avoided without a car, or if they accommodate those outside a vehicle). Seattle’s helpfully tries to show where the hills are on main biking streets, although a novice cyclist may find a hill has to be fairly large before it makes the cut.

The information on a bike map tells you something about an area, regardless if you’re planning to bike, drive or walk. It is a map of the network for those outside of cars, where the connections are. It tells you where the parks are, where you can escape the urban landscape, how friendly an area is to those on the ground.

Even with a smart phone GPS in my pocket, at times I’ve had to stop and consult my bike map as I travel Seattle, checking if the algorithm’s plotted path actually makes sense on the ground, and how to connect one route to another. In theory, posted street signs complement the map by pointing out bike routes through the city. Seattle is better than most at giving bikers information on the streets, although I’ve found the signage at times to be oddly inconsistent. A series of signs pointing you along a road will suddenly stop, leaving me adrift.

Occasionally, however, once I find the path again, the signs continue along, a welcoming series of markers pointing out the way at least someone has determined is the best option for winding through the streets.

Last week I was commuting from Mt. Baker in the south to the University, a trek that requires finding the Montlake Bridge, which is apparently best done by staying as far away from the road leading to the bridge as possible.

The closer I got to the bridge, the less obvious the route was, so the regular Lake Washington Loop signs were necessary guideposts. Even so, I wasn’t sure I was following them correctly when they pointed me down an alley. Then a few turns later, another alley.

The official alley route was a new twist for me, but why not? It definitely avoided the traffic on the road. And after winding through, the signs sure enough popped me out right in time to catch the bridge across the ship canal to the University.

First, though, I took a detour. In between the alleys a waterfront park caught my eye. The trail soon enough restricted bikes, but I wandered far enough to find a small, still pocket of water nestled right underneath the highway. I’m filing the path along to Marsh Island and beyond away as a spot to return to, sometime when I’m looking to explore on foot.