Bikes on WA state highways?

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wildcat
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Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by wildcat » March 22nd, 2022, 12:44 am

What's the legality of riding a mountain bike in the shoulders of a limited-access Washington state highway? Yea or nay? I know riding on the federal interstate roads (5, 205) is considered an act of terrorism, but I'm not asking about those.

Specifically, I'm wanting to establish routings into Camas this summer and I really, really don't like riding the pretty terrible section of SE Old Evergreen Highway east of SE 164th, so I want to use Highway 14 to bypass it and make for a much smoother (if noisier) ride.

SE Ellsworth Road has a couple of very neglected and overgrown, but still somewhat usable, bike onramps onto the highway (here and here) but I think the City of Vancouver (or maybe WSDOT?) stopped maintaining them for general lack of use.
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jvangeld
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by jvangeld » March 22nd, 2022, 12:06 pm

This map shows where bikes are not allowed on Washington State highways.

https://wsdot.maps.arcgis.com/home/webm ... cc1a0f1d01

A map which confused me. Because it seems to indicate that bicycling on the Interstates is generally legal. This blogger says that is so, and backs it up with a quote from the RCWs.
RCW 46.61.160 provides in pertinent part as follows: “Bicycles may use the right shoulder of limited-access highways except where prohibited. The department of transportation may by order, and local authorities may by ordinance or resolution, with respect to any limited-access highway under their respective jurisdictions prohibit the use of the shoulders of any such highway by bicycles within urban areas or upon other sections of the highway where such use is deemed to be unsafe.”
https://www.dugganbikelaw.com/freeway-frolic
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jvangeld
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by jvangeld » March 22nd, 2022, 12:33 pm

Wildcat, I looked into those bike on ramps on Ellsworth. I've seen them while driving by, but never quite understood them. 1970s bicycle infrastructure was just built differently. It seems that they are for the benefit of cyclists traveling Southbound on I-205. The only legal way to bicycle across the Glen Jackson bridge is on it's central bike path. So, if you are biking down 205, you are supposed to take the westbound SR 14 off ramp, cross SR 14 using the Ellsworth bike ramps, and then head back East to get to the Glen Jackson bike path. (The safest route would be to turn East from Ellsworth onto SE 23rd Street and then continue onto the bike path from the end of that street) The bike ramp onto Ellsworth Southbound is even one-way, just like a normal off ramp.
EllsworthLookingWest.PNG
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wildcat
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by wildcat » March 22nd, 2022, 3:51 pm

Thanks for the information and map link. It looks like as long as I stay off the section between 205 and 164th I'm good, which is fine since I'm interested primarily in the section from SE 164th to NW 6th Avenue (or perhaps further out, to the Port of Camas).

AFAIK SE 23rd Street is the only way in and out of the 205 bike track. It parallels Highway 14 then comes up the center of the bridge. But it's fenced off from 14 and the only other way I can think of would be to jump the fence.

Never realised it was actually legal to ride the interstates in Washington! In fact it was basically hammered into us in bike safety presentations in junior high school, in no uncertain terms by WSDOT coppers no less, that you would be a filthy outlaw and shame and disgrace would be wrought upon your family for the next 10 generations if you so much as think about taking your Mongoose out there! But that was, like, 25 years ago. Has it always been like that or did it happen fairly recently?
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jvangeld
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by jvangeld » March 24th, 2022, 10:09 am

Yeah, I remember learning about access restrictions on highways this way: My mom was driving me, when I saw a sign on an on-ramp that said, "No Pedestrian or Bicycle Access." I asked my Mom why the sign was there. She said, "Traffic moves really fast on freeways, so it isn't safe to bike or walk on it. So they put that sign up. On our (rural) road that doesn't have a sidewalk, we are allowed to walk on the road. But we have to be really careful so that we don't get run over." From that information, I concluded that it must be illegal to walk or bike on all urban freeways, and that the lack of signs at many on ramps was just due to vandalism or damage.

In 1965 the law stated that bicycles could ride on highways unless prohibited. In 1985 it was amended to also allow bikes to ride on the shoulder of highways unless prohibited. I don't believe that that RCW has been changed since then. https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.160

You are correct about SE 23rd Street. I had forgotten about the fence.
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by wildcat » March 24th, 2022, 4:01 pm

The copper that used to lecture at our school in the late '90s was old enough to be my grandad, so maybe he was just repeating outdated information that was current when he entered the force after he got back from World War II? Wouldn't be surprised, especially if it was just to scare us little zit-faced teenage hoodlums into compliance. You know how [certain types of] people can be...

It sure would be great if there were more access points to the bridge than just SE 23rd. Gee, there's such a nice, wide median between Mill Plain and the bridge. I don't know why they don't pave some of it and put ramps at McGillivray and Mill Plain. I'm sure the state has some flimsy, bureaucratic excuse why it can't and won't be done. (Why not? They have for just about everything else.)
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by jvangeld » April 1st, 2022, 11:18 am

Ha! The median of 205 is not a good candidate for guerilla trail building. But that is where my mind goes.
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Re: Bikes on WA state highways?

Post by wildcat » April 2nd, 2022, 7:10 pm

I didn't mean making guerilla trails; WSDOT *could*, in theory, put a bike track down the center up to Mill Plain if there was enough demand. The median certainly is more than wide enough. (I remember reading somewhere that the ill-fated I-205 busway of the '70s was proposed to have extended into Vancouver through what is today the bridge's center bike track then terminated in a park-and-ride at Mill Plain, I guess either where WalrusMart or Booger King and Elmer's are today. This is supposedly why the section of bike track overpassing Airport Way adjacent 205 is road-width.)

Actually connecting it to the bridge around the fire hydrant and standpipe, ideally without making people fall into a ~20' drop, would be the real trick.
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