**2006 UPDATE**
Published: Friday, April 16, 2004
Edmonds ready to plan Interurban Trail
By Bill Sheets
Edmonds Enterprise editor
EDMONDS – As far as the Interurban Trail is concerned, Edmonds will no longer be a dead end.
The trail runs from south Everett through unincorporated Snohomish County through Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace, ending near the city limits north of 228th Street SW at 73rd Place W. Parts of the route take trail users across streets and intersections, and improvements in some of these areas are planned, but the connection is continuous nonetheless.
Not so in Edmonds. But now the city has state and federal grants totaling $410,000, and possibly as much as $521,650, that it will use to supplement its own money to design and build the $950,000 project. With Shoreline having built or preparing to build the sections through its city, and Everett and Seattle looking at improvements, eventually the route could link the larger two cities as it did in the days of the Interurban trolley cars of the early 20th century.
"It could be a viable commuting link," said Hank Landau of the Edmonds Bike Club.
Edmonds officials want to begin designing the city’s portion of the trail in the next few months. First, they’ll want input from the community, and are now determining how they want to go about soliciting feedback.
The city’s 1.1-mile portion of the former Interurban right-of-way runs from 228th Street SW to the county line at 244th, along 74th and 76th avenues near Lake Ballinger. This portion of the route is now occupied by utility corridors and public roadways.
An exact route for the trail has yet to be determined, but possibilities include sections of deteriorated gravel corridors owned by the Snohomish County PUD, said Darrell Smith, city of Edmonds traffic engineer. Where these aren’t available the city will install bike lanes along 76th and possibly 74th avenues, with the combination of the bike lanes and sidewalks constituting the trail route, Smith said. But "at some point we’d like to break away (from the street) and have more toward the lake and the golf course," he said.
Included in the plans are a "Lake Ballinger Station," consisting of a transit shelter, bike lockers, bike route kiosks and Interurban Railway history placards, and a gateway entrance on 76th Avenue consisting of landscaped medians and five-foot bike lanes on both sides of the street.
Smith said the city is planning to complete its design by the end of this year and build the project next year. The trail will meet up with Shoreline at 244th Street SW, where a trail installed by the Ballinger Commons apartment complex will double as the Interurban Trail, said Kirk McKinley, Aurora and Interurban project manager for Shoreline. Bike lanes will take the trail from Meridian to Ashworth along 200th where it will connect with segments to the south.
"The bike club is very interested in seeing a continuation of the Interurban Trail," said Landau, a Woodway resident. "Once it’s continued there’ll be a lot of additional usage."