15 years in, Everett keeps working on bike safety plan

Published 2:25 pm Wednesday, April 15, 2026

EVERETT — Halfway through a 30-year implementation period of its bicycle master plan, the city of Everett is about halfway done with the projects laid out in the plan, city staff said in an April 8 committee meeting.

In 2011, the city approved the bicycle master plan, a 133-page document that laid out dozens of planned improvements to biking infrastructure across the city, including trails and bike lanes.

Since the plan was approved, the city has built about 41 miles of on-street bike infrastructure and 23 miles of off-street projects like trails, city engineer Tom Hood said on April 8. The city has completed 25 projects listed in the plan, including a connection between 41st Street and Everett Station, new bike lanes along 112th Street and completing trails along Marine View Drive.

The city also completed work on a bike connection along Hoyt Avenue, connecting the north end of the city to the Interurban Trail, which provides a direct bike path between Everett and Seattle. Since 2023, the city has also added new wayfinding signage, along with bike lanes along West Casino Road, Fleming Street and Madison Street.

Sixteen more projects are expected to be built by 2030, Hood said. Those include bike lane projects on 12th Street, California Street, and on a newly built North Broadway Pedestrian Bridge, along with new city bike and data collection efforts.

Council member Luis Burbano, a bicycle commuter and a longtime advocate for safer streets, said that the city can still do more to improve cycling infrastructure, particularly in south Everett. The bike lanes the city installed on 112th Street, he said, are dangerous — traffic on that five-lane street is fast-moving and the bike lanes are narrow, right next to traffic. He also said more traffic calming measures could be installed in the south Everett area to prevent speeding drivers.

That 112th Street bike lane was built early in the implementation of the bike master plan, Hood said, and standards for cycling infrastructure in the city have since improved.

A national nonprofit, The League of American Bicyclists, awarded the city of Everett as a bronze-level bicycle friendly community — first in 2021 then again in 2025 — one of 10 other cities across the state that received the bronze level award. In a survey included with the report, respondents were split as to the safety of biking in Everett — about 45% of respondents were satisfied with the city’s bike safety, while 39.2% were dissatisfied.

Other cities in the northwest of similar size to Everett, like Bellingham and Eugene, Oregon, have received gold ratings from the nonprofit.

Using support from federal funding, the city hopes to update the bike master plan soon, combining plans for improved bicycle infrastructure with plans to improve pedestrian safety in a new Active Transportation Plan. That work, as part of the implementation of a broader street safety measure known as Vision Zero, is expected to be completed by the end of 2027.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.