RVD72

Hi Everyone,

I am considering a position at Amazon (South Lake Union). I would be relocating to the area from Southern California. Down here I usually ride my bike to work along a bike path on the beach. It's a long ride (16 miles each way) so I find that I get lazy a lot and just end up driving.

I am looking at buying a home on Mercer Island and then commuting to SLU. It looks like from google maps that it's about 8 miles? That should be pretty fun for me on a bike. I also have a Brompton folding bike so I may take that sometimes and mix in some public transportation (Amazon supplies an ORCA card to all employees).

What is the route like from Mercer Island to SLU? Are there some nice bike trails or is it mostly going to be street riding? I did some searches online and it looks like I can ride the I90 bridge and a tunnel to get into the downtown area so that looks nice. My only slight hesitation is that from my research, if I do a quick bike + bus commute, it's going to be 2 buses (1 transfer) and I'd much rather have a single bus ride if I take the bus.

Are buses pretty cool in terms of letting me on with my folded brompton?

What's the overall bike culture like? Good hills? Nice routes? I also ride a road bike on weekends and like 20-40 mile rides.

Dan.

zoltani

The route from mercer island is pretty nice. You might have to ride on the road on the island, but lots of cyclists do so it should be good. There is a bike path along the I-90 bride and corridor through Seattle. Now, why on earth you'd want to live on mercer island is a question in itself.

Great bike culture here IMO, and there are tons of trails and beautiful scenery. Seattle area is super hilly, which makes riding both fun and challenging. When i had to commute to the eastside i did a mixture of bike and bus and I could almost always get my bike on the bus, but a folding bike will be good. I saw some people taking folding bikes on the bus.

RVD72

thanks for the info. as for the question on why mercer island? i have a wife and young child (elementary school) so schools are important now. i looked into the best school districts in the area and it looks like they are bellevue, medina, mercer island.

medina is nice but i also ride my bike to work most days and since i'll be in SLU if i take this job, the commute would go across 520 which is tolled and has no bike lane. so i'd have to take the bus across and then ride my bike...which is ok but not ideal.

bellevue and mercer island are nice because i can bike across the I90 and ride up downtown to work.

MI is a little closer though and residents can use the express lane even as single drivers...

hence the conclusion is buy a place on MI.

but i'm open to any other thoughts, flaws in my logic, etc.

RVD.

Seattle Forrest

My mom lived on Mercer Island for about five years. I would never, ever want to live there. It offers none of the amenities of living in an urban setting, but it suffers a lot of the drawbacks. And by that I mostly mean traffic; it's an island on a lake, with one road (I-90) going in and out. Rush hour is from about 2:30 until 6:30 or so, and from what I hear (I don't go out that way except on weekends) it's got much worse since they've started tolling 520. When I worked in Factoria (2 miles east of Mercer Island), my 11 mile drive to Eastlake (a mile north of SLU) often took an hour and a half, sometimes longer.

If you'll only ever bike your commute, the I-90 trail is actually kind of pleasant, if you don't mind hills. It basically lets you off a bit south and east of downtown; most people would probably take Dearborn to the International District (that's how I do it on recreational rides) and then I'd recommend the waterfront trail up to Broad, which is a bit of a climb into Queen Anne and then SLU. There are lots of other ways to do it, but none avoid the hills entirely, and this one will avoid most of the street traffic.

The bus is less obnoxious than driving because you can read a book, but it's stuck in traffic like everybody else. I think it's every bus in the region that has a bike rack in the front, so it doesn't have to be your folder; you could take your R3 on the bus if you had a safe place to park it.

zoltani

Haha, the 520 would not be my reason for discounting Medina, it would be more because I do not have millions of dollars.

Actually riding and busing across 520 isn't that bad, I did it for a year. Ok, one year was enough for me though...

BikinPotter

Ditto on Mercer Island living. It's fine as long as you never need to leave the island, which is pretty limiting. Since the tolling of 520 the traffic is nasty. The ride over I90 is OK. After life in SoCal the winters in Seattle will come as quite a shock. I came here from San Francisco in 1990. Every year I tell myself I can't take another winter here. Wet, cold, and bloody DARK. Summer is lovely, except when it isn't. When it's nice here, it's REALLY nice.

Seattle is surprisingly provincial, for all of its liberalism. It's been like pulling teeth to build a reasonable transportation system, which isnt all that great, but is s-l-o-w-l-y making progress. It is car culture here, make no mistake. Portland is light years ahead of Seattle in that regard. As Seattle Forrest mentioned, the bus is great except that it's stuck in traffic with all of the cars. The Great Recession has not helped with public transportation funding, either. We have bike lanes and "sharrows". A vocal cycling community. A bike-sympathetic mayor.

King County metro's policy on folding bikes is that you can take them into the bus, as long as they fit under a seat and don't take up aisle space. Occasionally you will come across a driver who didn't get the memo, or pretends they didn't.

What are the schools like in West Seattle? That would be a fairly easy commute to South Lake Union. Or Vashon? It would require a ferry, but still quite nice!

Pain

I think Mercer Island would be a good place to raise children. I-90 traffic is not any worse then I-5 or West Seattle bridge traffic. Cycling across the I-90 bridge on a stormy winter day would certainly make you wish you had stayed in CA though.

I can't think of a "good" way to get from I-90 to South Lake Union. Going East-West in Seattle is generally hard because of the hills.

If you stay on the I-90 trail till it dumps you onto Dearborn then you have to deal with a narrow dangerous bike lane on Deaborn to downtown and miserable traffic going through downtown. If you just look at the map and think I will draw a straight line and go over capital hill, well that would be very challenging physically and without any real bike lane.

I think I would get off of the I-90 trail at Lake Washington before the tunnel and go on Lake Wash Blvd to Interlaken Blvd over to Lake Union. Lake Washington Blvd does not really have a bike lane, but it is a very popular bike route so the drivers are used to bikes.

Tourmalet

Mercer is meh. It's an island with one way in and out. No culture to speak of, so you'll be taking that one way out. A lot. I think Bellevue schools are best. Not sure about Mercer schools.

Anyhow, I agree with the previous poster. DO NOT follow the bike lanes through downtown. Uuuugh. Get off I-90 trail on the west side of the bridge and ride north on Lake WA Boulevard through the UW Arboretum.

For a SLU job you are much beter off living right there in that area, or north of the city. Working north and coming in from the south (or vice versa) and traversing downtown every day is a pain in the ass.

In a few years they will finish the new 520 bridge (with a bike lane added) and you'd be able to commute from Bellevue or Kirkland straight to SLU. East side may seem like a whole other world, but it's only a few miles from UW. Faster than coming in from West Seattle, in fact. Kirkland is very nice.

RVD72

thanks for all of the useful info. on days when the weather is bad, i plan to just use my ORCA card and bus it to work. i don't *have* to bike every day.

i'll take a look at bellevue and the areas of cylde hill, medina, etc. as well. i guess it just irks me a bit to know that i'd have to pay a toll every time i want to go to the seattle side if i lived in medina. sure, the houses and lifestyle are expensive over there but i'm still relatively frugal.

theconfession

I wouldn't worry too much about what people are saying about the I-90 traffic into Seattle from Mercer Island. You get to use the express lanes into Seattle, and back to MI for the commute home. I also work in SLU and work with a guy who is on MI and says the worse part of the commute is dealing with the downtown Seattle surface street traffic...

As far as riding in is concerned, I would go I-90 trail to Dearborn then onto 4th Ave. Take 4th ave all the way through downtown to Blanchard or so. Then you can make your way to the Amazon campus via Westlake, or better yet 7th/Dexter to Republican, etc. 4th Ave is the only "hill" you'll need to worry about and it's pretty flat as far as hills go. If you were really lazy you could take 3rd, which is almost dead flat but puts you into the mix with bus traffic, so I'd avoid that street entirely.

OnStreetBiker

I biked from Bellevue to Amazon SLU across the I-90 bridge. The route was pretty good. I suggest taking Dearborn, right on 4th, left on 3rd, right on Virginia, left on Westlake. On the way home take Westlake, right on Lenora, left on 2nd, left on Jackson, jog over to Dearborn.

If you take the bus, get off at the Westlake tunnel station (or at 4th & Stewart if on a surface bus) and ride or walk the rest of the way. Walking is faster then waiting for the streetcar.

Be sure to ride in the left lane on Westlake to avoid the tracks. Also ride in the left lane going uphill on 3rd to avoid the busses, you will climb the hill faster than the busses since they stop often. Do not ride in the bike lane on 2nd, take a lane and stay with the traffic all the way down the hill.

RVD72

nice, thanks for the info. amazon is flying us out in a few weeks to look at houses, etc. they are paying for relocation and movers but i don't think i can trust those guys with my road bike. i'll probably have my LBS box it up for me.

i hope the biking culture is much better up there than it is down here. the area that i am in isn't too bad because a lot of tourists come around here and rent bikes so the cars are used to having lots of bikes around but most of the city is pretty bad.

toddles

This guy is a moron.

zoltani

nice constructive comment.....i think we know who the moron is in this thread

Tourmalet

Nice try. Actually, no it isn't even a nice try. But thanks for playing.

toddles

Tell me how wonderful you boys' life is. Live here all your life? I thought naught. Next time offer some advice when you know what you are talking about. Either that or put up an asterisk saying your view is full of sh*t.

zoltani

Ah yes, the typical "if you didn't grow up here then you can't have an opinion of my area" argument, seattle was great until all the microsoft/amazon people ruined it. Get off my lawn.

Seattle Forrest

I grew up in rural Connecticut, mostly. Mercer Island would be a decent approximation, only we were much further from the closest city. My mom thought a rural area would be a good place to raise kids. I freaking hated it.

Kids need stimulation and excitement, and need to be able to go visit their friends without having to talk some adult out of a ride and a ride home. They need neighbors who don't live a mile away, cultural stuff to take in, stuff to do.

If I had a kid, I wouldn't risk stunting their social future by raising them in a remote place like Mercer Island. What if they turn out like me - a grown man who posts in P&R?

toddles

I'm diggin' your responses Zoltani. keep that up and I may just have to urinate on it instead.

OnStreetBiker

RVD72

lol, we're going up this weekend to look at houses so i'll see what i think about mercer island. if we want bigger city life, we'll focus more on bellevue. i generally like slightly secluded areas but even in mercer island, the schools are big (bigger than here in redondo beach at least).

percy kittens

They could do a lot worse ;-)

jdgesus 

im from here, and mercer island is really really really nice place to live.

David Chen

I'd like to re-iterate some points OnStreetBiker made:

The Dearborn route from the tunnel allows you to go around a hill.

Avoid the street car tracks on Westlake. I haven't fallen due to them yet, but I know many cyclists that have.

The bike lane on 2nd is a death trap because it's on the left side, next to parking, and downhill; just take the lane to avoid getting left hooked and doored because people don't expect cyclists on the left going over 20 mph.

Depending on how busy 3rd is and if I feel like I can keep up with the buses there, I might take 4th going north instead of 3rd. Basically, if I decide to go more slowly than usual, I'll take 4th instead so as to not obstruct traffic on 3rd. 4th also has a bike lane on the left, but it is uphill instead of downhill like 2nd going south. 3rd is flatter.

There's a good number of cyclists in Seattle, and plenty of interesting routes, including the Mercer Island Loop. Can't say much about living on the island itself, though.

Seattle Forrest

That's like moving to the east coast and getting a place in Jersey for the city life.