Tom FucoloroThe Emerald City Ride is back! 2026 route will take SR-99 and the West Seattle Bridge
A scene from the 2024 Emerald City Ride.My favorite Cascade Bicycle Club event is back after a hiatus in 2025. The 2026 Emerald City Ride will start in Pioneer Square early on Saturday, April 25. The route will take over the SR-99 elevated freeway south of downtown, then cross the West Seattle Bridge before returning to land and making a loop via Alki, Fauntleroy and Delridge. The ride is April 25, and registration opens February 24. $50 for members, $65 for non-members, $15 for youth. Riders must register in advance.
The 2026 route is very similar to the 2024 route, which was a fun ride. It’s a 20-mile loop that is fairly flat except for one very long climb near the midway point. However, there is no time crunch on the climb because it is after the freeway section, so you can take it as slow as you want. My strongest memory from that hill was a young girl maybe in 5th grade or so leaving me and many other riders in the dust, her dad hustling to keep up. The highlight of the route was definitely having the chance to stop at the high point of the West Seattle Bridge and take in a view you rarely get outside of a traffic jam.
The Emerald City Ride always involves pieces of highway infrastructure that are typically off-limits to bicycling, so even people who bike around Seattle all the time can have a new or at least rare experience. The freeway elements also make it one of the club’s more logistically-challenging one-day rides. After the pandemic shuttered the 2020 ride season, the Emerald City Ride was the last to get back on its feet. There have been several years where the club tried to plan the ride but couldn’t secure all the details in time to pull it off. There were no rides between 2019 and 2024, and the club also couldn’t make it happen 2025. So it’s great to see it back.
Since it started in 2016, the ride has been held in the I-5 Express Lanes, the 520 Bridge, the old Alaskan Way Viaduct, the SR-99 tunnel, and the planned route on SR-99 and the West Seattle Bridge.
The ride starts fairly early to limit the amount of time the two freeways are car-free. Most of the non-freeway sections will be on roads that are open to traffic.
View the planned 2026 route via Ride With GPS.#SEAbikes #Seattle
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