The University of Washington has awarded a $12.3 million construction contract to Granite Construction to overhaul a one-mile section of the Burke-Gilman Trail running through campus, with crews set to begin work in spring 2027 and continue until early 2029. The project will widen the trail footprint, repave cracked and root-damaged sections, add better drainage, and install enhanced lighting along the corridor between the Rainier Vista walkway and NE 47th Street.
According to KING5, the Burke-Gilman Trail was converted from a railroad into a multi-use path in the 1970s and now serves roughly 500,000 people annually. Granite, an infrastructure company based in Northern California, will handle construction, and the outlet reports that Mike Stein, the company's regional vice president, said Granite teams bring extensive experience in collaborative delivery methods like progressive design-build. Stein added that Granite looks forward to collaborating with UW on safety, accessibility, and improving the overall experience of trail users.
The work is officially the second major phase of a modernization effort that stretches back a decade. The first phase, completed in August 2016 between 15th Avenue NE and Rainier Vista, doubled the trail's width there and introduced separated walking and biking lanes, according to the University of Washington. That earlier upgrade was timed to coincide with the opening of the UW Light Rail Station, and this new phase is meant to extend those same safety benefits east across the rest of campus.
Why This Stretch Needed Work
UW Transportation Planning management has pointed to specific hazards east of Rainier Vista driving the project, including root intrusion cracking the asphalt, narrow lane widths, and unlit corridors that deter commuters, per the university's facilities office. Those same renovations are expected to reduce long-term maintenance needs while improving accessibility for all users, per KING5's reporting on the project.
The scale of the funding goes beyond the construction contract alone. The University of Washington received legislative authority from the Washington State Department of Transportation to spend $16 million on the broader Burke-Gilman Trail Transit Access, Safety Efficiency Improvements project, which carries a total budget of $16.725 million, according to the Office of Minority & Women's Business Enterprises. Granite partnered with civil engineering firm KPFF Civil for the progressive design-build contract, with design work beginning in June 2026 and construction extending through late 2029, the facilities office notes.
A Campus Built Around Walking and Wheels
The push to widen the trail reflects just how much of campus life already happens on foot, bike, or scooter. UW's 2024 campus transportation survey found that 25.4% of commuters walk, 35.4% use transit, and only 8.0% of students drive alone to campus, figures the university says align with institutional goals to push overall drive-alone rates to 12% or lower by 2028. Those numbers have only grown more pressing since UW adopted Seattle's Scooter Share program in January 2025; by mid-2026, the university recorded the highest Lime e-scooter ridership among all U.S. college campuses, according to The Daily, adding a fast-moving layer of traffic to a trail already shared by pedestrians and cyclists.
Since July 2022, all University of Washington employees have received fully employer-paid, unlimited U-PASS transit cards, a policy that, per The Stranger, has expanded multi-modal connections between transit hubs and campus trail access points. Together, the free transit passes and record scooter usage help explain why UW considers separating walking, biking, and wheeled traffic on this stretch a priority rather than a cosmetic fix.
Part of a Much Longer Trail
The UW segment is a small but heavily trafficked piece of a much larger regional network. The Burke-Gilman Trail spans nearly 20 miles across King County, running from Golden Gardens Park in Seattle to Bothell along a former Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway corridor established in 1885, according to the Rails to Trails Conservancy. The conservancy has said the original campaign to create the trail served as a blueprint for similar projects in other cities around the country, and per UW Impact, the trail is considered a crucial part of University of Washington campus life.
That regional context also highlights a contrast just a few miles away. In July 2026, the Washington Court of Appeals ruled against the City of Seattle's attempt to bypass environmental review under SEPA for the long-delayed 1.4-mile Missing Link segment in Ballard, prolonging a legal dispute that has dragged on for two decades, as The Urbanist reported. While the state-authorized UW project has moved forward with legislative funding and a contract already in place, Seattle's city-managed trail gap remains stuck in litigation with no clear resolution in sight.
The UW corridor has also seen recurring maintenance headaches of its own. In September 2024, the Seattle Department of Transportation set up temporary detours across portions of the Burke-Gilman Trail to carry out pavement and root-damage repairs, a project Hoodline previously reported on as part of the trail's ongoing upkeep. With construction now set to run through early 2029, UW Facilities has not yet detailed how it will manage bike and pedestrian detours during peak academic terms in the years ahead, leaving that logistical question open as the project moves toward its spring 2027 start.
