A century-old wooden train trestle on Bellevue’s eastside is turning into the kind of fixer-upper no one really budgeted for. As crews work to convert the Wilburton Trestle into a key stretch of the Eastrail, they keep uncovering widespread rot and failing hardware, turning what looked like a straightforward retrofit into a slower, pricier, safety-first overhaul. The structure is being rebuilt to carry an 18-foot-wide walking and biking deck with several overlooks, and the surprises are forcing engineers to pause, reassess and spend more to keep the span safe.
Wear, rot and rising bills
Reporters touring the worksite have been told that crews found far more rotten wood and degraded steel bolts than officials planned for. Contractors have already replaced about 1,600 bolts, repaired or swapped nearly 2,000 timber members and salvaged more than 800,000 pounds of historic lumber. Those discoveries pushed the project’s price tag up by roughly $7 million, landing around $43.5 million in total, according to The Seattle Times.
What the county is building
King County and Eastrail Partners are turning the roughly 1,000-foot-long trestle into an 18-foot-wide elevated trail that will sit more than 100 feet above the valley floor. Plans call for three viewing platforms plus new concrete deck panels, railings, lighting and seismic reinforcements. The whole effort is intentionally designed to keep the trestle’s historic character visible while still meeting modern safety and accessibility standards, according to Eastrail Partners.
Schedule slips and a new opening window
Construction kicked off in 2024, and early project materials floated a 2026 opening. That timeline has shifted. King County Parks now points to mid-2027 as the realistic target because crews keep uncovering structural problems that require careful, time-consuming repairs. The county stresses that workers are methodically replacing damaged timbers and adding steel reinforcements rather than taking shortcuts, which helps explain the later finish line, per King County Parks.
How the tab is being split
The retrofit is powered by a mix of public and private money, including voter-approved levies, state transportation funding and corporate and philanthropic contributions. City materials and partner pages put the original estimate at roughly $37 million and credit major support from the King County parks levy, state Move Ahead WA funds, leadership gifts from Amazon and Kaiser Permanente and a contribution from the City of Bellevue. Those pieces were enough to launch construction, but the newly discovered repairs are forcing project managers to revisit budgets and stretch schedules.
A quick history and what it means
The trestle, built in 1904 and rebuilt several times during the 20th century, last carried freight trains in the late 2000s. What remains is both picturesque and fragile. Repurposing more than a century of timber and historic hardware almost guarantees that crews will uncover decay that is expensive to address, as described by The Urbanist.
For Bellevue residents, the Wilburton Trestle is more than a nostalgic backdrop. It is a missing link that will knit together Mercer Slough, a new NE 8th Street overcrossing and Sound Transit’s Wilburton Station into the larger 42-mile Eastrail network. City and county project pages say the finished span will offer safe, grade-separated access and scenic overlooks, while also warning that nearby areas will see intermittent closures through construction into 2027, according to the City of Bellevue.
