Anyone who routinely bikes through Fremont will want to figure out an alternate route one of the busiest stretches. WSDOT will be closing a section of the Burke-Gilman Trail starting Monday and won’t reopen it until Halloween.
The closure will run from the crosswalk west of the Lake Washington Rowing Club to the west end of the office building at 1000 North Northlake Way.
The reason for the closure is so crews can clean and repaint the Aurora Avenue/George Washington Memorial Bridge, which requires big equipment that will block the trailway. As a measure of safety, rather than having cyclists try to maneuver around the machinery, they’ve closed the trail and created multiple detour route options.
As Seattle Bike Blog notes, the biggest concern for cyclists is where they fit in along some of the alternative side streets where there are no bike lanes.
The most obvious solution here is to route a temporary trail through the parking area or on Northlake Way between Stone Way and the trail crossing under the Aurora Bridge. Northlake “was not considered because it is narrow with no bike lanes,” said Olsen. “That said, there won’t be any barriers in place to prevent someone from using Northlake for a short distance and rejoining the trail at the building located at 1000 N. Northlake Way.”
While they have some thoughts on the lack of work WSDOT has done to provide a safe biking alternative in the interim, SBB offered up their own suggestion for a safe alternative to avoid the closed stretch.