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Another bit of progress on eastside trails. (I’d seen the land use signs last year but didn’t realize that they’d made this much progress:)

There will be a tunnel where the trail goes under the 405/I-90 ramps (which allows them to widen the Factoria Blvd exit from eastbound I=90.)  There will be a bridge over Factoria Blvd and then the trail runs on the North side of 136th up to 150th.  At that point it cuts over to the South side of I-90 until the existing pedestrian bridge where it moves back over to Northrup Way.

MTSG_Alignment

They’re building the bridge now – they don’t have money for most of the trail sections so we’ll see when that materializes.  I’ll likely continue to ride the street, but the bridge over Factoria Blvd will be nice.

Here’s a link to the construction alert and here’s a link to the Bellevue capital works write-up.

here is my (old) I-90 writeup

here are selected rides starting at the I-90 tunnel

Last year I wrote

The last couple of years I worked I commuted by bike quite a bit, running up 8,000 or 10,000 miles each year. When I stopped working I knew I needed to maintain my activity level so I decided to try to bike every day and settled on a goal of 1,000 miles each month. I soon realized that short months during ski season get in the way of a monthly goal, and I restated my ambitions as 12,000 miles a year. 2018 was the fourth of those, and I hit the 12,000 mile mark at the end of October. At first I figured I’d just work on getting more than in 2017 until I realized that with a little push I could get to 10,000 on my single bike. I managed that, and ended up with 4,000 tandem, too.

2019 was kind of a repeat – I hit 12,000 by the end of September and 14,000 before Thanksgiving.  I ended up just a little over 10,000 on my single bike (again) but this year we rode 5,700 tandem.   Here it is according to Strava:

So what’s in store for 2020?  Same basic approach – try to ride every day, aim for about 1,000 miles / month with more in the dry months and less when it’s wet.  The big unknown is that Odette will be done working at the end of June and we have big home improvement and travel plans.  I think I’ve gotten a little carried away with “bike therapy” and maybe having her around more will let me back off a little, but we’ll see.

All fall King county was busy telling us how they were going to open the southern section of the ERC and the mile of ERC between the 520 trail and the Cross Kirkland Connector by the end of the year.

So early in the morning on New Year’s Day I rode across the 520 bridge and picked up the ERC on 120th.  Despite what is shown on Google Maps, this is still BNSF track, not ERC.  They haven’t even removed the rails yet.  I rode it anyway, frosty conditions and all, and it will be nice when it is done.

 

When I got home I looked at their website and they’ve backed off the end-of-the-year stuff and are now saying “spring 2018.”  I can’t exactly tell what they’re planning, but it looks like you’ll be able to get onto the trail from the bike lanes on Northrup at the bottom of the hill below the old part of the 520 trail.  Next, we need to get going on the segment between Totem Lake and Wilmot Gateway.