Central Seattle now has its very own Green Lake. With the lake’s running, walking, and rolling trail serving as a busy superhighway of human locomotion in a lovely Seattle setting, the Washington Park Arboretum’s new 1.2-mile Arboretum Loop Trail is ready to serve a similar purpose winding through the wooded wetlands along Lake Washington. You can celebrate its grand opening Sunday:

Arboretum Loop Trail Grand Opening

Built with $7.8 million in 520 construction mitigation funds from WSDOT, the rambling park and botanic collection now features a 12-foot-wide paved path for walkers, wheelchairs, slow bikes, and strollers. The “slow” in “slow bikes” is operable — the path is to improve access to the plant collection and was designed with curves undesirable for speedy bike commuters.

The new 520 is now the “longest floating bridge in the world” and carries thousands of Eastside commuters as well as walkers, runners, bikers, etc. with its 520 Trail.

The final phase of the new 520 is slated to soon begin. The so-called “Rest of the West” portion of the replacement project is slated to include highway lids in the Montlake and Roanoke neighborhoods, the south half of a new west approach bridge, a new Portage Bay Bridge, and a second drawbridge over the Montlake Cut. The first phase of construction — WSDOT is calling it the Montlake phase — is slated to begin late this year. It will create “a new Montlake interchange, a landscaped lid over SR 520, a bicycle/pedestrian ‘land bridge’ east of the lid, and a West Approach Bridge South for eastbound traffic.”

Some neighborhood opposition to the 520 plan continues. You can see the concept designs for many of the planned projects here. In addition to the coming surge of construction work related to 520, the area will also see construction of changes to the 23rd Ave corridor as Seattle “Vision Zero” work begins again in 2018. Construction work is also being lined up on the south end of the 23rd Ave corridor.

In the Arboretum, the new loop trail connects at the southern end of the park at 31st and Madison and proceeds 1.2 miles along the east side of Lake Washington Blvd. to Arboretum Drive through a swampy valley. There is connects to the existing paved path to make an accessible, all-weather 2.5-mile loop.

Electric trams will run tours along the loop to provide additional accessibility. The quiet electric vehicles are owned and operated by UW Botanic Gardens. The Loop Trail project involved daylighting parts of Arboretum Creek meaning, perhaps someday, the area will be visited by salmon, commuters from the past.

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