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Alert: New Burke-Gilman Trail detour at Stone Way is not bikeable or accessible – UPDATED

A car driving through an intersection with no crosswalk.
The intersection of Stone Way N and N Northlake Way.

UPDATE: SPU wrote to say that as of Friday morning, the intersection detour returned to its previous state. “I’m writing to let you know that SPU removed the detour today at 7 a.m.,” spokesperson Brad Wong wrote. “This specific area has returned to the status it’s been for the past six weeks. The removal was part of the project workplan. We expect to fully reopen the intersection of North 34th Street and Stone Way North in mid to late October.”

The detour in place as of Wednesday afternoon (September 25) to get people walking and biking on either N 34th Street or the Burke-Gilman Trail has no crosswalk and no curb ramp, leaving users of the region’s most popular trail without any clear direction or safe option to get to the other side.

I just happened to be riding down N 34th Street today when crews were changing the detour at the intersection with Stone Way N and the Burke-Gilman Trail. They routed us down the sidewalk and onto N Northlake Way, a street without bike lanes or consistent sidewalks. There was also no clear way to get back onto the trail on the other side of the closed intersection. But hey, maybe I was just there are the wrong time. So I swung by a little bit later after the fences and everything were set up, but the problems were still there.


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A person with a bike is stopped on the sidewalk where the curb ramp is missing.
There is no ramp on the northeast corner of Stone Way and Northlake Way, creating a challenge for accessibility and bicycling. Reinhard Spiegelhauer, a German public radio reporter, was interviewing me about bicycling in Seattle when we came across this detour, so he’s taking a photo of me taking a photo, which is very meta.

All trail users are routed down to the intersection of Stone and Northlake. Not only are the sidewalks very skinny, but the sidewalk on the east side of the intersection has no curb ramp, so there is no way to get a bike up or down to the road level without hopping the curb. There are also no markings at the intersection to designate a crosswalk of any kind, and there is no stop sign for people driving. Trail users are basically just told to disappear. Here’s a rough sketch I made from memory:

Map of the construction area with poorly-drawn markings showing the walking and biking detour missing a connection.
Not to scale, obviously.

Confident bike riders can hop the curb and bike with traffic on Northlake, but what about everyone else? The Burke-Gilman Trail is an accessible route designed for people of all ages and abilities, and this detour is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. Especially since the solutions seem fairly easy.

At a minimum, there needs to be a temporary ramp on the east corner, and a coned-off walking and biking area along the north side of the Stone/Northlake intersection so that people walking and biking can follow the shortest and simplest route around the closure. The hedges are also quite overgrown along the east sidewalk, constraining the already skinny sidewalk space and reducing visibility. Stop signs and perhaps coned lanes for westbound traffic on Northlake would also be wise since this is now a very confusing area, and the driving route no longer follows the lines painted on the road (see the top photo). It’s not immediately clear to anyone where they should be going, but I noticed that people driving westbound were not stopping. There is already a stop sign for eastbound traffic.

The thing is, Seattle Public Utilities already knows all this because they have been creating Burke-Gilman detours for this project for years at this point. I’m not sure how this one slipped through their process. Seattle Bike Blog also did not receive a construction detour notice, which has been common for this project in the past and makes me think this one didn’t go through all the usual steps.

Hopefully fixes can come quickly before anyone gets hurt, and changes can be put in place to catch these things in the future before they go into effect.



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9 responses to “Alert: New Burke-Gilman Trail detour at Stone Way is not bikeable or accessible – UPDATED”

  1. Jenna

    We biked there today and were thinking the exact same thing. Also, I hopped off a curb at a blind corner which made it even more uncomfortable. I hope they fix this soon.

  2. bill

    I biked through the work zone eastbound on N 34th this morning at about 8 AM. I was surprised there was no signage, no traffic control, no flagger, just a couple of dudes scraping loose asphalt in the former bike lane. I got my bike up on the sidewalk. Dragging the rear wheel up the wet slippery metal edge took a couple of tries. I hope no one slipped and fell there. The intersection was still open for crossing Stone so I was able to continue on the Burke. This is a big fail for SPU.

  3. Dave Boyd

    The detours through that area are a mess for vehicles as well. Drove through yesterday and in 2 places there were detour signs pointing in 2 different directions.

  4. Dave R

    I rode through last night – nearly ran into a pedestrian with a dog going around the blind corner – and I was going slow! The uncut curb and no signs were crazy

  5. Alistair Spence

    Stone Way and N 34th has been a mess for a couple of years now with weekly, and sometimes daily rearrangement of signs/barriers/cones etc. that showed little or no thought as to how it would be negotiated by pedestrians and cyclists.

    A couple of months ago they upped the ante, blocking off westbound N 34th, where it passes on the South side of the transfer station. They diverted west bound traffic down N. Northlake Pl, which is quite narrow and I have had multiple hostile interactions with drivers who are already upset that they’ve been inconvenienced by the diversion, so now they’re driving way too fast down what many of them seem to think is a one way street. I’ve had a lot of close calls over the last few months in particular.

    The flaggers, when there are any there, are usually on their phone, not paying attention to the general chaos created by this situation. They don’t do anything to try and make things run a bit more smoothly.

    Over the months, I’ve figured out an ok way to get west of Stone way. I go (the wrong way) down the alley way behind the Brooks building which links N 34th to N 35th and I use N. 35th to cross Stone Way, then cut back down to the bike line on N 34th via Woodland Park Ave N. Not ideal, because N 35th is very busy, due to people having diverted over to it because of the closure of N 34th, but it does work.

    Very disappointing that the city has left us to fend for ourselves on this one, especially for such an extended period of time.

    1. Jessica M

      +1 to Alistair as I am doing the same thing and sometimes it’s blocked without warning going East in the morning and I have to turn around and go back to Woodland Park Ave N. As a neighbor and commuter I wish there was a way to get email updates about this instead of finding out during the morning or evening commute.

      1. Jessica M

        detour is still there despite everything getting paved over and workers just surrounding a fence

  6. Roberto

    Getting through this construction zone has been part of my daily bike commute for the past 2+ years. It’s not the first time SPU dropped the ball, but it’s the worst fumble they’ve had so far. Yesterday’s afternoon commute was an experience – I actually ride up and down Stone Way to the BG trail, so I got to see huge backups of cars on N Northlake Way, 34th, 35th, and especially 36th, all trying to somehow get across Stone Way. There was an added air of Karenosity in all those grumpy faces behind the windshields as I biked by. Thanks, SPU, for adding even more ire to driver’s usual hostility towards cyclists.

  7. Dirt McGirt

    Just remember when you’re going through all this BS, it’s all EVO’s fault.

    I’m going to keep not supporting Bryce Phillips and his enormous greed.

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