UPDATE: SPU wrote to say that as of Friday morning, the intersection detour returned to its previous state. “I’m writing to let you know that SPU removed the detour today at 7 a.m.,” spokesperson Brad Wong wrote. “This specific area has returned to the status it’s been for the past six weeks. The removal was part of the project workplan. We expect to fully reopen the intersection of North 34th Street and Stone Way North in mid to late October.”

The detour in place as of Wednesday afternoon (September 25) to get people walking and biking on either N 34th Street or the Burke-Gilman Trail has no crosswalk and no curb ramp, leaving users of the region’s most popular trail without any clear direction or safe option to get to the other side.

I just happened to be riding down N 34th Street today when crews were changing the detour at the intersection with Stone Way N and the Burke-Gilman Trail. They routed us down the sidewalk and onto N Northlake Way, a street without bike lanes or consistent sidewalks. There was also no clear way to get back onto the trail on the other side of the closed intersection. But hey, maybe I was just there are the wrong time. So I swung by a little bit later after the fences and everything were set up, but the problems were still there.

All trail users are routed down to the intersection of Stone and Northlake. Not only are the sidewalks very skinny, but the sidewalk on the east side of the intersection has no curb ramp, so there is no way to get a bike up or down to the road level without hopping the curb. There are also no markings at the intersection to designate a crosswalk of any kind, and there is no stop sign for people driving. Trail users are basically just told to disappear. Here’s a rough sketch I made from memory:

Confident bike riders can hop the curb and bike with traffic on Northlake, but what about everyone else? The Burke-Gilman Trail is an accessible route designed for people of all ages and abilities, and this detour is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. Especially since the solutions seem fairly easy.

At a minimum, there needs to be a temporary ramp on the east corner, and a coned-off walking and biking area along the north side of the Stone/Northlake intersection so that people walking and biking can follow the shortest and simplest route around the closure. The hedges are also quite overgrown along the east sidewalk, constraining the already skinny sidewalk space and reducing visibility. Stop signs and perhaps coned lanes for westbound traffic on Northlake would also be wise since this is now a very confusing area, and the driving route no longer follows the lines painted on the road (see the top photo). It’s not immediately clear to anyone where they should be going, but I noticed that people driving westbound were not stopping. There is already a stop sign for eastbound traffic.

The thing is, Seattle Public Utilities already knows all this because they have been creating Burke-Gilman detours for this project for years at this point. I’m not sure how this one slipped through their process. Seattle Bike Blog also did not receive a construction detour notice, which has been common for this project in the past and makes me think this one didn’t go through all the usual steps.

Hopefully fixes can come quickly before anyone gets hurt, and changes can be put in place to catch these things in the future before they go into effect.