The Slow Fix and the Fast Fix: Fauntleroy's Two Traffic Projects Run on Different Clocks

In July, family and supporters of Maridee Bonadea filled a Fauntleroy Community Association meeting room to talk about the Vashon cyclist's death on SW Wildwood Place, a short climb uphill from the ferry dock. Her daughter Lani told the room that her mother "was not silent" when something needed fixing. A month later, the association followed through: on August 11 it convened a dedicated public forum on bicycling safety at The Hall at Fauntleroy, drawing officials from the city, county, and state.

That is the part of this story that moves fast. The other part has been moving since 2016.

Washington State Ferries opened its public process on redesigning the Fauntleroy terminal in the fall of that year. Nearly a decade later, the one piece of that project residents can actually watch get built, a traffic signal at the intersection where the dock meets Fauntleroy Way SW, is scheduled to start construction after September 8, a little over a week from now. The full terminal replacement, the one that adds real dock capacity, will not break ground until 2028 and will not open until 2031. Two clocks are running on the same stretch of road this fall, and they are running at wildly different speeds. That contrast, not either project on its own, is the thing worth understanding if you live here.

Why the signal took this long

The Fauntleroy terminal was built in the 1950s to serve smaller, less frequent boats. It now handles ferries that regularly overwhelm its 80-car holding capacity, and the backup at the unsignaled intersection has been a known hazard for years: vehicles rolling off the boat have to stop, wait for a gap in Fauntleroy Way traffic, then turn, which routinely stacks cars back down the dock and delays the next departure. Washington State Ferries has been studying fixes for that specific bottleneck since the current project formally started in the spring of 2021, working through a federally required Planning and Environmental Linkages study that only closed out in early 2026 when the Federal Highway Administration signed off.

Even after that approval, the signal kept slipping. As recently as last October, the agency was telling residents the light would be installed by spring. A Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber report from March found that plan scrapped, with WSF citing internal staffing gaps and delays in the City of Seattle's plan review. The agency also made a deliberate choice to hold construction until after the summer travel season, and Fauntleroy Community Association meeting notes from May add a second reason for the fall timing: a construction moratorium tied to Seattle's hosting duties for this year's World Cup. Between staffing, permitting, and a soccer tournament, a project that had already spent five years in planning picked up several more months of delay before a single traffic cone went down.

When it does start, the work itself is not small. Crews are expected to spend three to four months on-site running new underground power connections and installing the signal pole and its arms, which puts realistic completion sometime in late 2026 or early 2027. Once the light is live, it will only activate when ferries are unloading, staying green for Fauntleroy Way traffic the rest of the time, and it will come with two turn restrictions that close out long-standing habits: cars exiting the dock will no longer be able to turn left onto northbound Fauntleroy Way, a move some drivers already make despite it being technically barred today, and left turns from northbound Fauntleroy toward the dock and toll booths will be prohibited outright.

The problem the signal was never built to fix

Here is the detail that gets lost when people hear "the ferry dock is finally getting a light": that signal was designed to solve a vehicle-flow and loading-efficiency problem. It was never scoped as a bicycle safety project, and it sits at a different location than where Bonadea was killed. Her crash happened uphill on Wildwood Place, a stretch with on-street parking, no dedicated bike infrastructure, and what her family described at the forum as an absence of any "share the road" signage.

That gap is exactly why the Wildwood response and the terminal signal are two separate projects, running on two separate timelines, even though a stranger to the neighborhood might assume the new traffic light solves both problems. It doesn't.

How fast "fast" actually was

At the August 11 forum, FCA president Frank Immel and vice president Catherine Bailey moderated a panel that included SDOT representatives, who fielded a long list of specific asks from attendees: paint the curb red where parking is removed, install boulders to reinforce the new curb line, add speed cushions before the curve, put in an all-way stop at Fauntleroy and Wildwood, and build a real bike lane. SDOT's response was that a conceptual design was already underway and that changes would follow within a few weeks.

They moved faster than that. By 4pm that same day, Bailey had emailed West Seattle Blog with an update: temporary no-parking signs were already up along Wildwood, from Fauntleroy to 36th.

"They heard us!"

That single line captures something the ferry signal timeline never will. Seattle's Department of Transportation already had an active protected bike lane project mapped out for Fauntleroy Way SW and SW Wildwood Place under its citywide Vision Zero program, and an August 21 project update shows the agency actively weighing two design options, a protected uphill bike lane paired with a shared lane downhill, or protected lanes running both directions. Parking has already been removed along the affected block. None of that required a five-year federal environmental study. It required a family willing to stand in front of a packed room and a community association willing to organize the forum.

What else changes on this corridor before winter

The traffic story isn't the only thing shifting on Fauntleroy Way this fall. A few blocks from the dock, work is finally underway at the former Midas location at 4457 Fauntleroy Way SW, where Sherwin-Williams is building a second West Seattle store aimed at homeowners rather than contractors, expected to open later this year. It's a small, ordinary sign that the corridor keeps functioning even with two safety projects converging on it at once, and it's worth knowing about if you've been driving past that storefront wondering what's coming.

The Fauntleroy Community Association has also flagged a broader concern worth passing along: board members raised worries earlier this year about several infrastructure projects landing in the same stretch of neighborhood in the same window, including a Seattle Public Utilities culvert replacement on Fauntleroy Creek and a separate SDOT crossing project near SW Rose Street. None of these run on the same schedule, which means residents should expect a genuinely busy fall of cones, flaggers, and detours in a neighborhood that isn't especially large to begin with.

The lesson underneath both timelines

The takeaway here isn't that Fauntleroy is getting safer streets, though it is. It's that the two paths to safer streets in this neighborhood look nothing alike. One runs through federal environmental review, advisory groups, and a decade of public meetings before a single pole goes into the ground. The other runs through a family's grief, a community association willing to organize a room on short notice, and a city department that had signage up before the sun set on the day it was asked. If you live here and ever wonder how something actually gets fixed on your street, the answer this year has been: not by waiting for the official process to reach your block, but by showing up when the Fauntleroy Community Association calls a meeting. They gather on the second Tuesday of most months, skipping August and December, and the schedule and minutes are posted at fauntleroy.net for anyone who wants to see how the next fix gets made.

Larissa Wilson has called West Seattle home for fifteen years and keeps close track of what actually moves the needle in neighborhoods like Fauntleroy, from ferry dock timelines to the meetings where real change gets decided. If you're thinking about your own next move in this corner of Seattle, or just want a neighbor's read on what's coming next, Larissa Wilson would love to schedule a private consultation.