New lawsuit opens old wounds over the ‘Missing Link’ of the Burke-Gilman Trail

The Burke-Gilman Trail, a 29-mile span of recreational trail which unites Seattle with Bothell, has long been incomplete. A section dubbed the “Missing Link,” spanning 1.4 miles of trail in Ballard, forces cyclists to share the road with vehicle traffic and cross railroad tracks.

People Power created Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Trail

That Missing Link intersects a stretch of railroad track operated by the Ballard Terminal Railroad (BTR). The track poses a safety risk to cyclists forced to cross at a steep angle. As such, a local law firm is filing suit against the City of Seattle and the BTR on behalf of eight cyclists who suffered injuries while attempting to cross the tracks.

Completion of the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail is nothing new for the City. In November, the Seattle Department of Transportation announced it would complete the project to accord with a deadline to leverage funds made available through the Levy to Move Seattle. Original draft plans of that project date back several years, which include the movement of the BTR tracks along Shilshole Ave Northwest and Northwest 45th Street. Those plans have since been adapted in response to court intervention filed on behalf of BTR, and they no longer include mention of moving the tracks.

According to public information requests filed by Washington Bike Law, the firm which plans to sue BTR and the City in March for damages on behalf of the injured cyclists, Seattle Fire Department responded to 39 incidents involving crashed bicyclists on the tracks in question between 2015 and 2020. Information obtained by MyNorthwest indicates that injuries suffered by crashers include bone fractures and concussions, necessitating hospital care.

The City of Seattle has made a number of changes to the Missing Link over the years. Between 2001 and 2013, the City painted designating marks on the trail to instruct crossing at a perpendicular angle. The lawsuit alleges that the City received more than a dozen injury claims from those who crashed on that stretch of trail in the middle aughts.

It further asserts that, after the City installed a two-way bike lane in 2013, it did not maintain the warning signs, flex posts, and markings to guide movement over the tracks. Plans to revamp those safety measures were delayed in response to the pandemic, among other reasons. The lawsuit suggests that the City’s hope the Burke Gilman Trail could be completed sooner led to inaction.

The City has since reworked signage and markings for improved crossing, but in an email to MyNorthwest, cycling advocates who frequent the Missing Link called the markings “absurd” in that they require cyclists to take two 90 degree turns in a short space.

The crux of the problem, as far as Washington Bike Law’s attorney Rob Levin is concerned, is long-awaited improvements to the Missing Link. Washington Bike Law argues that the Missing Link needs improvement as Seattle waits on the completion project currently scheduled to resume this year and complete by 2024’s end, at which point the Levy to Move Seattle expires.

“While the community continues to wait for completion of the Burke-Gilman Trail, the bicycle route on NW 45th St. and Shilshole Ave. NW remains the primary path of travel for bicyclists riding in the Missing Link,” Levin wrote to MyNorthwest.

“The infrastructure currently in place at the crossing of the railroad tracks beneath the Ballard Bridge is simply not sufficient to make the crossing reasonably safe for ordinary travel by bicycle. The City and/or the railroad should take immediate steps to make the area safe. Those steps could include better channelization, starker warnings and/or installing material to fill the flangeway gap to prevent tires from being entrapped or deflected by a track rail.”

While the City technically owns the tracks, they are operated by the Ballard Terminal Railroad. That line largely services one client: Salmon Bay Sand and Gravel.

In 2017, Paul Nerdrum, now president of Salmon Bay, expressed “deep disappointment” over the Burke-Gilman Trail’s advisory committee’s since-reneged plans to move the railroad tracks.

“Instead of focusing on how to truly protect and preserve the heavy industrial and freight based nature of this area and the men and women who rely on this area for employment, SDOT remains more interested in finding ways for people to recreate (play) in industrial Ballard and having the bike and pedestrian communities dictate this process,” Nerdrum’s letter to then-Seattle Mayor Ed Murray reads.

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