solarbird | what was this bike route?

This thing – this sign and the route it indicates – is NOT on Seattle’s official Bike Map.

And it’s old. It’s pretty dang old.

The sign is on Burke-Gilman, on the left side, as you bike south. The picture’s from Riviara because Google Maps is annoying that way, but at least with this you see the trail itself.

Is this a leftover sign from a dead route that just never got removed? What is – or maybe more accurately was – this route?

If you go down any of the streets in that direction, you don’t find any followup signs. At least, I can’t find any. Nothing on Lakeshore, which would need it the most and right away, if nothing else to tell you go to north or south, even if south is obvious. No sign of one on NE 103rd, 100th, or 97th.

I’ve noticed it for ages biking by, and never bothered trying to track it down until I got into building bike maps (Greater Northshore shoutout) and it’s not even in my primary coverage area, but now I’m curious and interested and it just goes…

…nowhere.

And now I’m wondering, where even could it have gone? 103rd and 100th both stop at Sand Point Way which is your first opportunity to continue south, and you don’t want to be biking on that. 97th goes past tho’, continuing two blocks further, to 45th Ave NE, and that’s a reasonable bike road if you’re okay with hills… but… again, no signs.

You can get back onto Burke-Gilman from 45th NE via … NE 94th and 93rd both, though. But that’s a weird and short “bypass,” and isn’t UW, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

Past there, you’ve got to get off 45th as quickly as you can because there’s nowhere else to go, it spirals down into dead-end side streets with no way out.

Going west on NE 92nd gets you onto 43rd NE gets you to NE 88th to… 35th NE? Is that what they were doing? I hope not, dang, that’s scary riding.

Let’s say they put you on 40th NE off of 88th instead. That’s not terrible. It’d get you back to Burke-Gilman in close-to-UW territory, at one of the more unpleasant crossings. It’s not my favourite idea but it’d work.

Or if you wanted or need to stay off Burke-Gilman you could go right onto to NE 52nd off of 40th Ave, then left onto 39th Ave, then right onto NE 50th. I’ve done this; it doesn’t actually save you time, despite saving you distance. That road would dump you onto Blakeley, which points you straight at UW campus north but doesn’t give you a good way in. Or you could drop down to NE 49th, which gets you to 24th NE and from there Pend Oreille, which does.

No matter how you do it, it’s gonna be a weird goddamn bypass and I don’t understand why you would want to do that.

It is a M Y S T E R Y O F B I K E R O U T E S!

To me, at least.

Somebody has to know what this used to be. Is that person you?

If it is, let me know! I’m really curious, because seriously – what the hell? ٩๏̯͡๏)۶

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.