To celebrate Sound Transit’s 2 Line opening over the weekend, my kid and I biked across the 520 Bridge to a station that seems destined to play a special role in connecting biking and transit on Eastside. The newly-opened Wilburton Station is basically part of the EasTrail. The connection for trail users is seamless, easy and thoughtful. Planners clearly valued the synergy between the new light rail line and the under-construction trail. The result is a station that could be the 2 Line’s answer to UW Station on the 1 Line with its seamless connection to the Burke-Gilman Trail.

The way the 2 Line is designed, Wilburton Station is the only station with immediate access to the EasTrail, though Spring District Station is not too far. Access from the north of Wilburton Station is already in place, and a trail bridge over NE 8th Street is set to open in the coming months to connect to a short trail segment south of the station that ends at NE 4th Street.

Trail users coming from Kirkland can continue on the trail past the giant colorful nails:

Like most of the EasTrail, the new trail section is gravel. As of the weekend, the gravel was fresh, wet and not yet fully packed down, but it should be rideable using any bike assuming the surface solidifies like other sections of the trail. Just be on the lookout for soft spots. I saw a couple deep ruts where people’s tires sunk into the gravel, which is not supposed to happen on a proper hardpack gravel surface.

For now, the bridge over NE 8th Street is still under construction, but the trail connection into the station is open.

The area around Wilburton Station is also on the verge of a lot of development. At the moment, there are a lot of open air parking lots immediately adjacent to the station, but that could change now that the light rail station is open. With the stunningly tall trail trestle providing a landmark experience and both the trail and light rail making access easy, the area has a lot of potential. More more homes and destinations nearby could someday make it one of the more commercially active parts of the whole EasTrail route.

There are already a lot of use cases for combining biking and transit at Wilburton Station. For example, biking the EasTrail is already the best way to connect between the 2 Line and much of Kirkland. For people along the 2 Line who do not have quality bike connections from their homes or workplaces to the EasTrail (one reason we need Bike Bellevue), the train is an excellent way to get them and their bikes to the EasTrail. People could even use the 2 Line as something of a temporary bike shuttle from the I-90 Trail to the EasTrail by catching the 2 Line at South Bellevue Station. A trail connection from the I-90 Trail to South Bellevue Station should be open soon (I have asked the King County sewer project team for an update), but until then you can take some side streets to get there:

UPDATE 5/1: The trail connection from South Bellevue Station to the I-90 Trail is now open.

Wilburton Station is a good transfer point between bikes and transit now, and it will only become more important as new trail and transit segments come online. In the not-too-distant future (currently scheduled for the end of 2025), the EasTrail should extend south over the very cool Wilburton Trestle before crossing I-405 and connecting to Mercer Slough and bike routes to the I-90 Trail. By that time, the 2 Line should also connect to Seattle via the I-90 Bridge, making a bike ride to the station that much more useful.

All these new biking, walking and transit options have the potential to spark a transportation renaissance on the Eastside.