A coalition of neighbors wants to add five new crosswalks and two new bus stops along Aurora Avenue North in Fremont, and they want it done in two years, not ten.
The campaign, called Reconnect Fremont, comes from the Aurora Reimagined Coalition. It’s an all-volunteer group that has pushed for changes along the Aurora corridor since 2021.
Their ask: five new signalized, at-grade crossings at N 38th, N 41st, Motor Place, N 46th, and N 50th, plus two new E-Line bus stops at N 38th and N 50th. It’s all within the stretch of Aurora that splits Fremont in two.
“The problems in Fremont are mostly about connectivity and high speeds,” said Ankur Dhoot, an organizer with the coalition. “You just can’t get across, and the cars have no reason to slow down.”
The last comprehensive plan for the corridor was drawn up by the Washington State Department of Transportation in 2003.
“While some of the recommendations for near-term improvements have been implemented, few significant changes have been made to realize the full design vision that was proposed at the time,” according to the April 2025 Seattle Department of Transportation Aurora Avenue Corridor Planning Study.
SDOT’s current planning phase began in 2025 and is expected to last about two years, with no construction timeline set yet. But Reconnect Fremont isn’t part of that official process. It’s a separate push by ARC to get the city moving faster, specifically on the stretch through Fremont.
The coalition’s approach has shifted, Dhoot said. ARC previously flagged problems and left it to the city to design a fix. Now the group is pitching the city something more concrete: a fully costed plan it believes can be built within two years, paired with the coalition’s own efforts to line up public support and state funding.
“We can tell you roughly how much it’ll cost, and we think you can do it within two years,” Dhoot said. “We’ll drum up the public support for you, and we’ll talk with the state about funding for you. Now it’s just your job to go do it.”
The coalition points to Aurora’s history of collisions, gaps in pedestrian infrastructure, and accessibility barriers, cited in SDOT’s own corridor study. City surveys back that up: in both 2024 and 2025, Fremont respondents to Seattle’s annual Public Safety Survey ranked traffic safety as their top public safety concern, ahead of policing, property crime, and homelessness.
Adding to the safety concerns are that students from three Fremont-area schools – B.F. Day Elementary, Hamilton International Middle School, and Lincoln High School – frequently cross Aurora.
Volunteer members of the Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee, a city panel formed in 1975 to coordinate safe-routes-to-school work, wrote in a 2024 letter to the mayor and city council, that 22 people have been killed in traffic collisions on Aurora Ave N over the past five years.
The committee specifically asked for an at-grade, signalized crossing at N 41st on behalf of B.F. Day students.
A single at-grade crossing wouldn’t be enough to slow traffic on its own, Dhoot said. He pointed to the stretch of Aurora north of Green Lake, where crossings spaced every three to four blocks force drivers to keep braking for lights rather than accelerating back up to speed between them. That’s the reasoning behind proposing five crossings as one package, spaced roughly the same distance apart.
The northernmost proposed crossing at N 50th has drawn letters of support from the Woodland Park Zoo and Friends of Lower Woodland Park. Friends of Lower Woodland Park pointed to Seattle Public Schools’ plans to build a Lincoln High School playfield at the N 50th gravel lot, arguing a crossing paired with an E-Line stop would be “critical for safety, accessibility, and student transportation needs” once the field is built.
Reconnect Fremont has also picked up endorsements from the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, Ballard Fremont Green Streets, the Transit Riders Union, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587.
The coalition held a follow-up community walk along Aurora on Sept. 26, building on one it held in April. State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, who represents Fremont in the 43rd Legislative District, and King County Councilmember Jorge Barón, whose District 4 covers the neighborhood, both attended.
The walk came about a month after Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson signed an executive order directing SDOT to speed up safety work on the city’s most dangerous corridors, naming Aurora Ave N among them. The order gives SDOT until Jan. 31, 2027, to report on how it will streamline early safety delivery on those streets. Whether Reconnect Fremont’s five-crossing proposal factors into that process, or moves ahead of it, remains an open question.
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