**2007 UPDATE**
Published: Friday, March 25, 2005
Interurban Trail will get a bridge crossing I-5
By Lukas Velush
For the Enterprise
Between Everett and Mill Creek the Interurban Trail is entirely too urban.
To get across I-5, the hikers and bikers who use the popular north-south trail must brave 128th Street, hoofing or riding along the edge of a crowded six-lane bridge.
Soon, they’ll have their own $3.5 million bridge.
The state Department of Transportation plans to build a pedestrian bridge that will span I-5 just north of 128th Street. Construction starts this summer and will last until next spring.
Then, in 2006, the state will finish the project by building the quarter mile of trail needed to connect the path to 124th Street SW just west of I-5 and to Third Avenue east of the freeway.
The Interurban Trail is an evolving regional trail system that, when completed, will extend from Everett to Seattle, according to the city of Seattle’s Web site.
The trail follows the route used by the Interurban trolley that ran between Ballard and Bellingham at the beginning of the 20th Century. When the rail line was abandoned in 1939, the route remained in use as a power line corridor. Now cities along the route are using it as a trail.
Today at the Everett-Mill Creek section, crossing I-5 is dangerous for trail users, both because there’s only a sidewalk on the north side of the bridge and because it’s quite narrow, said Methqal Abu-Najem, project engineer for the state.
At some point everyone who crosses I-5 also must cross 128th Street itself, which is six lanes wide and has about 30,000 cars pass over it every day.
"It’s a safety situation," Abu-Najem said. "We felt this really is a benefit to the public to separate the cars from the pedestrians."
The pedestrian bridge will be 384-feet long and will be 15-feet wide, room enough for two lanes of bike and foot traffic. It will be built with pre-made concrete girders that can be dropped into place, keeping the cost down and limiting traffic restrictions, Abu-Najem said.
One piece of the puzzle that won’t be resolved yet is a section of trail on the east side of I-5 that runs south of 128th Street to 130th Street SE, said Jamie Holter, a DOT spokeswoman. As it is today, trail users are supposed to stay on 130th Street until it curves north to become 3rd Avenue SE. Eventually, 3rd Avenue connects to 128th Street.
Instead of taking that circuitous route, trail users have long since beaten a shortcut path into the soil next to the northbound I-5 exit ramp at 128th Street, Holter said. That shortcut just happens to line up with the new section of trail connecting trail users to the new pedestrian bridge.
"Eventually we’ll tunnel under 128th Street and connect the two," Holter said.
That can’t happen, however, until the state gets money to rebuild the 128th Street bridge over I-5.
The state will not pave that southern section of trail until a tunnel can be dug, but it will make some basic improvements that will make it safer to use in the interim, Holter said.
Lukas Velush is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.