If you have walked the Cross Kirkland Corridor any time since last July, you have probably noticed the fencing move. Not disappear. Move. One month it blocks the gravel near NE 52nd Street. A few months later that section is clear and the barricades have relocated up near NE 85th. Ask a neighbor when the trail construction is supposed to end and you will get a shrug, because the honest answer is that there is no single end date. There are two.
The corridor is 5.75 miles of converted rail line running through the middle of Kirkland, part of the larger Eastrail system that will eventually stitch together Renton, the Eastside, and Snohomish County. Right now it is also the meeting point of two unrelated capital projects, run by two different public agencies, on two schedules that do not line up. One of those projects is essentially finished. The other will not be done until early 2027. Treating them as a single "trail construction" story is the reason so many residents keep thinking the disruption is over when it is not.
The pipe project: mostly closed out
The first closure had nothing to do with transit or roads. In late July 2025, King County and City of Kirkland crews found a leak in the Eastside Interceptor, a seven-foot-diameter sewer main that runs underneath the CKC and carries roughly 10 million gallons of wastewater a day to King County's treatment plant in Renton. The leak was entering Kirkland's piped stream. No public health risk was identified, but the county's Department of Natural Resources and Parks issued a Declaration of Urgency in September 2025, and the city followed with its own Proclamation of Emergency to speed the repair along.
What followed was a stop-and-start sequence on the trail segment between NE 52nd Street and 108th Avenue NE. The corridor briefly reopened for about two weeks starting December 11, 2025, then closed again as early as January 5, 2026, while crews diverted wastewater into a temporary above-ground pipe running along the trail's west side. Repairs were declared complete in mid-February, and the segment reopened to the public on February 23, 2026. A month later, on March 24, crews closed the same stretch again, this time for a single day, to test soil ahead of a planned repair to a rockery wall and culvert sitting beneath the county's pipe.
That is where the public record on the sewer project trails off. King County's own project page noted crews would "return this summer" to finish stabilizing that rockery and culvert, and that new trees would be planted once the work wrapped. Nothing in the record after that March update confirms whether that summer return happened without further closures. Practically, though, apart from the one-day test in March, the segment between NE 52nd and 108th has behaved like an open trail since late February, with no further closure notices posted. If you use that stretch on your commute or your morning run, it is reasonable to treat it as normal now, with the caveat that a short-notice reopening of the rockery work is not out of the question before winter.
The interchange project: still years from finished
The second closure is the one still shaping the corridor today, and it has nothing to do with sewage. It is tied to the I-405/Northeast 85th Street Interchange and Inline BRT Station Project, a joint effort between WSDOT, Sound Transit, and design-build contractor Graham Contracting to rebuild the interchange and add a Stride Bus Rapid Transit station in the freeway median. As part of that work, the city broke ground in July 2025 on a companion project: a 12-foot shared-use pathway along NE 85th Street, including a pedestrian bridge crossing directly over the CKC to connect downtown Kirkland to the Rose Hill area and the future BRT stop.
At the July 2025 groundbreaking, Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold framed the stakes plainly, telling the city's news outlet:
"This shared path will close the accessibility gap between downtown Kirkland and Sound Transit's new 405 Bus Rapid Transit station."
The trail closure at NE 85th Street that began July 18, 2025, was described at the time as lasting "months," with two posted detours, a shorter gravel route via NE 87th Street and 114th Avenue NE for most users, and a longer ADA-accessible route down to 6th Street for anyone who could not manage the shorter path. The shared-use pathway itself was originally slated for spring 2026 completion. The surrounding interchange work suggests that timeline slipped. WSDOT's own March 2026 update put the new oblong roundabout on NE 85th Street's rebuilt lower street level on track to open that spring, with a second roundabout at 114th Avenue NE targeted to finish by June. But the interchange as a whole, which began construction in early 2023, is not expected to open fully to traffic until early 2027, and weekend ramp closures have continued well past those spring and early-summer targets.
That gap between "a roundabout opens on schedule" and "the interchange is done" is exactly where residents keep getting caught off guard. Full weekend ramp and street closures at Exit 18 have continued into late summer, including one from 10 p.m. Friday, August 14 through 5 a.m. Monday, August 17, 2026, for pavement grading and curb installation. A matching closure is scheduled for September 11 through 13, four days from now as of this writing. If your route through the corridor or across NE 85th Street touches that intersection, plan for it the way you would plan for a scheduled bridge lift, not as a surprise.
Two clocks, one trail
Here is the comparison that actually matters if you use the corridor regularly:
| Sewer repair (ESI-14) | Interchange & BRT project | |
|---|---|---|
| Agency | King County / City of Kirkland | WSDOT / Sound Transit |
| Trail segment | NE 52nd St to 108th Ave NE | NE 85th Street crossing |
| Started | Late July 2025 | July 2025 (pathway); 2023 (interchange) |
| Current status | Reopened Feb 23, 2026; rockery/culvert follow-up unconfirmed | Roundabouts targeted for spring/June 2026; recurring weekend ramp closures continue |
| Next milestone | None publicly scheduled | Sept 11-13 ramp closure; interchange opens early 2027 |
The two projects happen to overlap on the same gravel path, which is why they read as one long saga instead of two separate ones with different endings. The sewer story is close to resolved. The interchange story is not, and residents planning around NE 85th Street should expect intermittent weekend disruption through at least the rest of this year, with the fuller picture not settling until the interchange itself opens in early 2027.
What this actually changes about a Kirkland Wednesday
None of this touches the parts of daily life the corridor was built to support in the first place. The Kirkland Wednesday Market still runs at Marina Park from 3 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays through the end of September, comfortably south of both construction zones. The long, wooded stretch of trail past the Google campus, just beyond the NE 85th Street work zone, sits outside both project footprints entirely. The disruption is real, but it is contained to a specific crossing, on a specific schedule, tied to a specific agency's specific deadline. Knowing which project you are dealing with, and which clock it runs on, is the difference between rerouting your Wednesday errand with five minutes of planning and standing at a barricade wondering if the whole trail is gone for the season.
It isn't. It is just busier at one crossing than at the rest, and that crossing has an actual finish line. It is just not this month's.
If you are the kind of Kirkland resident who tracks details like this because you like knowing your own neighborhood better than a search result can tell you, that instinct is exactly what Brian Hopper brings to clients across Kirkland and the Eastside. Whether you are years from a move or just want a local read you can trust when the time comes, reach out any time to talk through what is actually happening on the ground here.
