Watch: New Overlake Village bike/walk bridge over SR 520 opens

A bike/walk bridge connecting the 520 Trail to Sound Transit's upcoming Overlake Village Station is now open. Hanoch at Best Side Cycling filmed a bike tour of the bridge, including its interesting forest illusion artwork by Leo Saul Berk.

The $10.4 million bridge connects directly to the 520 Trail on its northwest end, and a gradual winding ramp on the southeast end connects to the station area. Building it required cooperation between the City of Redmond, Sound Transit, WSDOT and USDOT. The project has been in development for more than a decade and opened three or four years later than originally scheduled. More than half the funding came from federal grants.

Unfortunately, you can't currently bike across the 520 Bridge to go try the new Overlake bridge because of construction, though hopefully the 520 Bridge trail will reopen before the weekend (February 2) as planned.

The opening of the Overlake bike/walk bridge and the upcoming opening of Sound Transit's 2 Line puts more urgency behind the need for Redmond's vision of a 152nd Ave NE with protected bike lanes and a pedestrian-oriented retail main street" experience.

A street in transition. 152nd Ave NE at NE Turing Street, two blocks from the new bridge and station. From Google Street View.

Today, the area is in flux as it makes the transition away from car-oriented suburban office parks and parking-oriented retail into a transit-oriented neighborhood with street-facing retail. The example above almost looks like a before and after image. One side has space for a protected bike lane in front of a mixed-use building with street-facing retail. The other side has only a sharrow painted in the middle of a general traffic lane next to a sidewalk passing in front of a sunken parking lot for an office-park-style building.