I biked across the Ballard Bridge twice last weekend.
On Saturday, the bridge was its usual terrorscape: biking over the insanely/impossibly/unsafely narrow sidewalk, squeezing past cyclists and pedestrians coming in the opposite direction, concentrating on each concrete post (don't want to catch my handlebars on one and be flung into oncoming traffic), then getting to the north end/west side of the bridge and waiting at the janky cut in the curb as cars zoom past before jumping into traffic and hoping none of the oncoming cars would be turning right/right over me. (You have to guess because turn signals are for pussies, right?)
Sunday was worse: It was all of the above plus a Seattle City Light truck parked at the north end/west side of the bridge right in front of the cut in the curb where cyclists are supposed to jump into oncoming traffic. So I had to choose between dismounting and stepping over curb in front of the truck and then jumping directly in front of the oncoming cars (advantage: They'll see me coming—right?) or dismounting and stepping over curb behind the truck and hoping that anyone who might be turning right in front of the truck would see me in time to stop.
Cyclists have been pointing out for years that the Ballard Bridge is a death trap. The city did something about the "notoriously" unsafe bike lane on Second Avenue—it moved on planned improvements—after a cyclist was run over and killed on Second Avenue last summer. But the city did nothing after a cyclist was killed on the Ballard Bridge in 2007.
To my fellow cyclists in Seattle: They're not going to do anything about the Ballard Bridge until after a cyclist dies—until after another cyclist dies—or until cyclists make not doing something about the Ballard Bridge a much bigger headache for the city than doing something about it could ever be. Here's my suggestion: We pick a day for cyclists to converge on the Ballard Bridge and shut the fucking thing down. Hundreds of cyclists ride in the car lanes right to the middle of the bridge and stop. We refuse to move until someone from the mayor's office, someone from SDOT, and someone from the city council comes to meet with us. Then we have a chat and let 'em know we're going to shut down the Ballard Bridge again and again and again until the city begins to execute a plan to make the bridge safe for cyclists and pedestrians. Not "comes up with a plan," not "convenes a task force to make suggestions about coming up with a plan," but actually begins to execute a plan.