Is the trail actually closed, or is it just the road, or is it both? If you've tried to get a straight answer this summer, you've probably found two versions of the same story. One says the whole corridor, trail and roadway together, is shut down for the rest of the year with no detour. The other says traffic is moving fine, just slower. Both are technically true, which is exactly the problem.
The short version: a 600-foot stretch of the East Lake Sammamish Trail between Louis Thompson Rd NE and NE Inglewood Hill Rd is closed with no official detour, and it will stay that way for the rest of 2026. The road running alongside it is not closed. It just feels that way if you're one of the people who used the trail every day and are now discovering what it actually did for you.
The Alert That Made This Sound Like a Full Shutdown
King County Parks put out language back in early spring warning that the trail and the adjacent roadways, East Lake Sammamish Parkway NE and Shore Lane, would all close starting as early as May 2026 and last through the rest of the year. Seattle Bike Blog reported it the same way, calling it "a bit rough" and noting there would be no official detour for anyone trying to get between Issaquah and Redmond on two wheels.
Read that alert on its own and you'd plan your summer around a corridor that no longer exists. Drive the Parkway today and you'll find something different: a single lane closed at a time, a flagger, and traffic moving through without much delay. When the Seattle Bike Blog reporter called Sammamish City Hall to check, he reached Sheila in the Public Works Department, who confirmed the Parkway itself was never being fully closed. Crews are managing it one lane at a time and waving cars through.
That gap between the warning and the reality is worth sitting with, because it changes what you actually need to plan for.
The 600 Feet That's Actually Closed, and the Parkway That Isn't
The real closure is narrower and more specific than the initial alert suggested. King County's own trail page puts the closure start at June 1, 2026, and describes it as a 600-foot section of trail between Louis Thompson Rd NE and NE Inglewood Hill Rd, closed to replace aging culverts. Short as that stretch is, its location splits the entire 11-mile trail into two disconnected halves. There is no detour around it. If you're on foot or on a bike and you hit that gap, you turn around.
The road, meanwhile, stays open with lane restrictions. If your daily routine involves driving East Lake Sammamish Parkway to get across the plateau or down toward Issaquah, the disruption is minor: a flagger, maybe a short wait, nothing that reroutes your morning. The people who feel this closure are the ones who weren't in a car to begin with.
Twenty Years to Build, One Summer to Finish
The reason this particular 600 feet is the one causing trouble is that it's the last piece. The East Lake Sammamish Trail has been under construction, in phases, for two decades:
- An interim gravel trail opened in 2006, after King County settled a legal fight with property owners along the old rail corridor.
- The Redmond segment was paved and finished in 2011.
- Issaquah's segment followed in 2013.
- Sammamish's own stretch went in over three separate phases, completed in 2015, 2018, and 2023.
What's left, the 600-foot crossing at George Davis Creek, is the one piece that never got built with the rest. Once the new culverts go in, the creek will run in open air instead of underground pipes, which restores passage for local Kokanee salmon, and the trail will get a new overlook at the crossing. It's a genuinely good outcome. It's also the reason the disruption has a real end point instead of dragging on indefinitely: this closes out a project that's been in progress since before some current residents moved to the plateau.
The trail's reach makes the gap feel bigger than 600 feet. It connects to the Issaquah-Preston Trail on the south end and to the Marymoor Connector and Redmond Central Connector on the north, which link up with the Sammamish River Trail and Sound Transit's Link light rail stations in Redmond. It's also one segment of the 44-mile Locks to Lake Corridor, a regional trail system that runs from Seattle's Ballard waterfront all the way to the Cascade foothills. A short gap in the middle of a long chain still breaks the chain.
Why This Hits Recreational Users Harder Than Commuters
Here's the part that doesn't show up on any closure notice: for most people who live in Sammamish, this trail was never a commute route to begin with. The plateau's daily life, schools, grocery stores, the businesses along 228th, sits up on the hill. The lakeshore, where the trail runs, is mostly something you drive past on your way somewhere else, or a place you go specifically to walk, run, or bike for its own sake.
That geography means the closure lands differently here than it would somewhere the trail doubled as a transportation backbone. It's not adding minutes to anyone's commute to work. It's taking away the one place in town where you could walk the dog, push a stroller, or ride with a kid without sharing space with cars. That's a real loss, but it's a specific one, and knowing which kind of loss you're dealing with is the difference between panicking over a closure notice and just adjusting your evening walk.
What to Actually Do Between Now and Whenever the Culverts Are In
A few practical notes, sorted by how you actually use the corridor:
- If you drive East Lake Sammamish Parkway regularly, expect single-lane closures with a flagger, not a blocked road. Build in a few extra minutes, not a new route.
- If you walk, run, or bike the trail for exercise, the 600-foot gap is a hard stop with no official detour. You'll need to pick a side and stay on it, or drive to whichever segment you're using that day.
- If you use the trail's north end to reach Redmond's Link light rail station, that connection through the Redmond Central Connector is currently interrupted at the gap. Plan an alternate approach to the station until the closure lifts.
- If you're looking for a substitute loop, the only two options are riding around the west side of the lake or taking surface streets up through the plateau. Neither has the separation from traffic that made the trail worth using in the first place.
None of these are dramatic changes. They're just not the changes the original alert made them sound like.
What You Get When It's Done
The closure ends when the culverts are in and George Davis Creek is running in open air instead of a buried pipe, which finishes the last unbuilt section of a trail that's been two decades in the making. Kokanee salmon get passage they haven't had before. Trail users get a new overlook at the exact spot that's currently a dead end. It's a reasonable trade for a rough year, especially once you know it's the last piece rather than the start of a longer pattern.
Living on the plateau means paying attention to details like this, the kind that don't show up on a map until you're standing at a trail gap wondering where the rest of it went. Kapil Gangane keeps an eye on this sort of thing because it's part of what makes daily life in Sammamish what it is, not because it's a pitch. If you're curious how projects like this one fit into the bigger picture of the neighborhood, or you just want to talk through what's changing here, Kapil Gangane is happy to compare notes. Let's Connect.
