Katie Wilson Kicks off Expanded Bicycle Weekends on Lake Washington Boulevard
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson kicked off the long Memorial Day weekend with a bike ride on Saturday – with around 300 of her fellow Seattleites. The launch for the 2026 Bicycle Weekend season on Lake Washington Boulevard drew safe streets advocates from all over the city celebrating an expanded schedule this year.
Rainier Valley Safe Streets, which organized Saturday's event, pulled out all the stops to start the season with a bang for Seattle's only annual open streets event, which stretches along a three-mile segment of Lake Washington Boulevard from Mount Baker to Seward Park.
Opening up the park boulevard for walking, biking, and rolling on summer weekends is a tradition that dates back to 1968, making it even older than other storied local institutions like the Seattle International Film Festival and Bumbershoot. But in recent years, the program has been thrown into political turmoil, with former Mayor Bruce Harrell significantly scaling back the Bicycle Weekend schedule after it was expanded under his predecessor, Jenny Durkan.
Wilson's reversal of that decision strongly aligned with the result of a 2022 public survey showing that 62% of Seattle residents wanted to see Bicycle Weekends expanded across more days. This year, every single weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day – apart from Seafair weekend July 31 to August 2 – will be Bicycle Weekends, with the hours of operation expanded to include Friday and Sunday night.
https://www.theurbanist.org/katie-wilson-kicks-off-expanded-bicycle-weekends-on-lake-washington-boulevard/
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