SDOT maintains more than roads and sidewalks, but also the many public stairways in the city.
Most of Seattle’s stairways were built between 1920 and 1950, at the time the city’s street system was being completed. Where grades were too steep for a street, stairways were built. Now 70 to 80 years old, many need repairs and upgrades to meet today’s safety standards. Bridging the Gap funds enable safety improvements (such as proper step height, tread width, rail height, and distance between landings) in addition to repairs.
There are five stairways being rehabilitated this year by SDOT, as shown below:
View Stairway improvements in a larger map
I keep meaning to send SDOT an email to ask if lighting is part of any of their stairway rehabilitation projects. Aside from the Wilcox Wall stairs (8th Avenue in Queen Anne) and maybe one or two stairways on Magnolia, most all the stairs that I recall walking in Seattle are unlighted. That’s usually not a problem in the summer, but once winter comes around the lack of lighting combines with overgrown vegetation and a lack of regular sweeping to make most of Seattle’s stairways a bit treacherous and downright creepy. Unfortunately I doubt this is the economic climate to be adding more to these sorts of projects. Take what you can get, I suppose.