A friend of mine asked me how to ride from Federal Way to Lynnwood this week. I’m not the best guy to ask but I just rode from Seattle to Lynnwood last week and I was planning on sharing what I learned. I have only been on the North Interurban 3 times and I have almost gotten lost every time. It is signed pretty well but there are a couple of turns that you need to be paying attention to or you could end up in a dead end.
As for riding from Federal Way, I lived there for 20 years but I don’t really know how to ride anywhere from there. Federal Way is not a good place to bike because of hills and lack of any real trails. I lived on the West hill of the Kent Valley so I always dropped down to the valley to go anywhere. I have been on the Southern Interurban 100’s of times and know every section of it. But the North Interurban is new territory to me.
I started in Beacon Hill and rode through town on 2nd Avenue, to the Westlake trail and then took the Burke Gilman to the U district. There was a 10k fun run going on last Sunday morning so I was forced to get off the trail a little earlier than I wanted but I ended up on 11th Avenue and took it up to the Ravenna bike lanes. I was then able to get my first look at the new green lake bike lanes.
It is a big improvement on the paint bike lanes that used to be here. Here is the Link to the SDOT project and here is a great video done by the Seattle Bike Blog recently. It was really easy to follow the trail and signs across 99 to the start of the Interurban trail.
One of my favorite first stops is this weird collection of wind mobiles near a power station…
The trail starts on some neighborhood greenway streets but eventually turns into its own path with its own interurban directional signs.
It is really a nice trail but has a couple of turn that you need to watch for the signs. There is a section on Meridian that is not very good shoulder riding and has a place where the trail disappears at an intersection. Seen here looking South.
But most of the trail was just fine until I came to a trail closure near Lynnwood where they are working on the new light rail tracks.
The Seattle Bike Blog wrote about it here. The detour was mostly on sidewalks but it wasn’t very long. I did not like this sidewalk sign that I’m sure most bikers ignore because there aren’t that many pedestrians on the sidewalk. I rode on the sidewalk until I did have walk a bit to get pass a walker.
I was excited to see the new light rail station under construction that will be done in 2023. It is a lot further South than I expected but it makes sense to be closer to the Lynnwood convention center, city hall and town center. It also is tough for stations to be close to suburban malls because commuters will fill up mall parking lots. This station is going to make it way easier for us South Seattle types to ride further away from home. I look forward to taking the train to start a Lynnwood to Everett ride or further. It is also great to have an option to train home when you are on long ride.
I turned around at the 25 mile mark from Beacon Hill which was right where the trail crosses I5 on its way to Everett.
On the way home, I saw a sign that said there was an Interurban to Burke Gilman Connector and decided to give it a try. It really is just a shoulder bike lane on SE Perkins Way that goes down a long hill. One of those cases where I didn’t really understand how high up I was. I wouldn’t want to take this route the other way.
I ended up going home on the Burke and then taking Eastlake back to downtown. I haven’t taken Eastlake much since the Westlake trail was finished in 2016, but I wanted to get my first look at the Fairview Bridge that was just built. It is great but they still have a lot of work to do on the rest of Eastlake to make it as safe as Westlake.
