Attention Sammamish River Trail users: A big King County sewer project that could impact the trail near Redmond is in planning now.

The project is still years away from breaking ground, but now is the time to get involved if you want to support high quality detour options. It is always better to get involved early rather than fighting a bad plan too late in the process.

The project team has picked the sewer route, so the next step is to develop the final design, including construction impacts and detours. That starts now.

There is an open house 3–6 p.m. today (Thursday) at Redmond Library. You can also complete this online open house and survey.

And since the project will close sections of the trail over a a period of three years, it’s vital that detours are safe, comfortable and direct so people can keep getting where they’re going on bike. This is a vital regional transportation route, and three years is a long time. The trail serves lot of people who aren’t going to feel comfortable on busy streets without at least a barrier of some kind, for example.

The good news is that there is a lot of time to get the detour plans right.

I asked the project team about the scope of trail impacts, and they sent me the following explanation as well as a couple early detour options:

Thank you for reaching out and for your interest in the Lake Hills/NW Lake Sammamish Sewer Upgrade Project. The entire project is about 4.5 miles in length. You are correct in that a large portion of the project follows the Sammamish River Trail between NE 85^th St and Marymoor Park.

Construction for the project is expected to begin in 2020 and take three years to complete. Construction will be conducted in segments such that the full 4.5 mile alignment won’t be under construction at once, but there will be significant trail closures and off-site detours during work on the trail. With limited access points to the trail, detour routes may vary from a half-mile to a few miles in length. Recognizing that this is a heavily used trail, we recently conducted a trail study to better understand how the trail is being used and how our project may impact use of the trail. Included in that study are some preliminary detour routes we are considering.

In addition to our online open house, we’ll be hosting a drop-in session tomorrow, 11/16 from 3 – 6 PM at the Redmond Library to share the latest design information. The event is open to the public and we encourage community members to stop by anytime during that window to chat with staff about the project.