The Fauntleroy Ferry Signal Is Finally Under Construction. Here's Which Street Absorbs the Turn It Bans.

"Starting work later than planned as we work with the contractor and City of Seattle" is how Washington State Ferries explained, in an update sent in August, why the traffic signal Fauntleroy has wanted for years still wasn't running. Anyone who has followed this project for more than a season has read a version of that sentence before. The light was first pegged for last summer. That got moved up to spring. Then WSF pushed it back again, this time to "after Labor Day." Bids didn't go out until March, and a contract wasn't awarded until June.

None of that is the actual news this month, though. With Labor Day now behind us, crews are cleared to break ground any day, and the signal itself should be functioning by around the middle of next year. What matters more for anyone who lives south of the dock is a design decision that got locked in almost a year ago and hasn't gotten nearly enough attention: the new signal will permanently ban left turns onto the dock from northbound Fauntleroy Way. Not during rush hour. Not during ferry unloading. All day, every day, starting the moment the light goes live.

What's actually breaking ground this fall

The intersection in question is the small T where the ferry dock meets Fauntleroy Way SW, just past Lincoln Park. Right now there's no signal there at all. During busy sailings, an off-duty officer directs traffic by hand. Outside those windows, drivers coming off the dock simply wait for a gap and go, which is how you end up with the near-misses neighbors have been reporting for years on that blind curve.

Washington State Ferries told the Fauntleroy Community Association at its April meeting that the signal work was cleared to start after September 8, timed specifically to avoid both the summer "high season" ferry rush and a construction moratorium tied to this year's World Cup matches in the region. The agency expects three to four months of actual construction, which puts a realistic finish somewhere in late 2026 or early 2027. Crews will be doing concrete work and installing the signal pole and its horizontal arms sometime between September and December. The signal itself won't flip on and start operating until roughly mid-2027, once WSF and the Seattle Department of Transportation finish tuning the timing.

This is also, worth saying plainly, a small project by ferry-system standards. A WSF representative estimated last fall that the signal alone would cost between $1 million and $2 million. That number only makes sense next to what comes after it.

The turn nobody's talking about

At the project's final Community Advisory Group briefing in October 2025, WSF's design team confirmed the traffic flow plan that will come with the signal: no left turn onto the dock from northbound Fauntleroy Way, 24 hours a day. That single rule is the part of this project that changes daily life for a real slice of the neighborhood, and it's gotten far less coverage than the signal pole itself.

Here's why it matters. If you live south of the dock, along the Barton corridor, 35th Avenue SW, or anywhere that funnels you north on Fauntleroy Way toward the terminal, the left turn into the dock is currently the only move you make. Under the new design, that move no longer exists, whether there's a ferry-bound backup or a completely empty road. One neighbor put it bluntly in the comments on West Seattle Blog's coverage of the April FCA meeting, warning the change would turn 45th Avenue SW into "a slow-moving freeway for traffic approaching the dock from the south."

That's not an exaggeration born of speculation. WSF's own design team acknowledged during last October's advisory briefing that the agency settled on a full-time ban after working through the alternatives with the city, and that drivers coming from the south will need to either find a different route in or loop back north to make a legal approach.

Where the traffic actually goes

Residents have already mapped out the likely workarounds in real time, in the comment threads under West Seattle Blog's project updates. The shortest detour, by most accounts, is turning off Barton onto 45th Avenue SW and looping back to Fauntleroy Way via Fauntleroy Place. Othello shows up as an option for drivers coming from farther north who'd rather avoid the loop entirely. Some residents expect Concord and Trenton to pick up overflow as well, since those are the cross streets that connect the 45th Avenue corridor back to Fauntleroy Way south of the terminal.

There's a second, quieter concern that hasn't gotten as much attention: what happens to the Wildwood-area blocks. Neighbors near the 9200 block of Fauntleroy Way, and on 46th and 47th, have asked whether backups from the new signal will spill into their own left turns onto Wildwood, a separate intersection a few blocks north that already handles its own share of ferry-adjacent traffic.

Here's the practical difference between how this intersection works today and how it's designed to work once construction wraps:

The Fauntleroy Community Association, led by president Frank Immel, has kept this item on its agenda through the spring and summer, and board members have specifically asked SDOT's Ching Chan for updates on how the city plans to handle the detour routes before construction wraps. That conversation is still open. If you live along 45th, Concord, or Trenton, this is the meeting to watch.

The much bigger project this one is warming up for

It's worth understanding why a $1 to $2 million traffic signal has taken this long, because the answer is that it's really the opening move in something much larger. The Federal Highway Administration approved the final Planning and Environmental Linkages study for the Fauntleroy terminal in early 2026, closing out a five-year review process. WSF's approved design for the full terminal rebuild nearly doubles dock capacity, from about 80 vehicles today to somewhere between 124 and 155. That larger project, priced at roughly $93 million, isn't scheduled to start construction until 2028, with a new terminal expected to open around 2031. The signal now under construction is deliberately being finished first because, as WSF has said, the safety fix couldn't wait for the bigger rebuild.

There's a wrinkle in that plan that longtime residents will recognize even if newer ones don't. Back in 1997, at the Fauntleroy Community Association's own request, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution barring the state from ever expanding the terminal's capacity. Nearly thirty years later, the state's own approved design does exactly that. That tension between the neighborhood's long-standing resistance to more ferry traffic and WSF's need to serve a terminal that already moves more than 2.3 million riders a year is the real reason this process has taken over a decade to get even this far.

What to actually expect this fall and winter

A few practical notes worth keeping in your back pocket as work gets underway:

• Expect lane restrictions and possible detours for larger vehicles once the contractor mobilizes, similar to the geotechnical drilling day in June 2025 when flaggers and a uniformed officer handled traffic through the intersection.
• Ferry sailing times themselves aren't changing because of this work. Any delays will show up in how long it takes to clear the dock after unloading, not in the boat schedule.
• Once it's running, the signal is designed to stay green for Fauntleroy Way traffic and flashing red for the dock except when a ferry is actively unloading, at which point it flips to let dock traffic through in a controlled burst.
• WSF has said it plans outreach to both ferry riders and neighbors before the signal goes fully live, so expect specific signage and notices before the no-left-turn rule becomes the permanent reality on the ground.
• The Fauntleroy Community Association meets monthly at the Fauntleroy Schoolhouse and has said it will keep pressing WSF and SDOT for detour details through the fall.

None of this changes what the ferry does. It changes how you get to it, in a way that's easy to miss if you're only tracking the headline about a new stoplight. For a meaningful stretch of the neighborhood, this project isn't really about the light going in. It's about the turn going away.

If you're watching Fauntleroy change this closely, whether it's this project or the next decade of work still ahead at the terminal, it helps to have someone local in your corner when the timing is right for you. Mara Haveson has spent years tracking exactly this kind of neighborhood detail across West Seattle. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk about what any of it means for your own plans.