Walk the gravel path behind the Google campus most September mornings and you'll pass the same runners, the same dog walkers, the same cyclists doing laps before work. It's the kind of route that becomes part of a routine without anyone thinking much about what's underneath it. Right now, a half-mile of that routine is gone again, closed off by orange fencing between Northeast 52nd Street and 108th Avenue Northeast, and it's going to stay that way for three months.
This isn't the trail's first closure of 2026. It's not even its second. The dates show that the same stretch has closed repeatedly, while a separate closure affected another section of the trail.
The same half-mile, three separate times
King County flagged trouble on this stretch back in July 2025, when crews discovered a leak from the Eastside Interceptor Section 14 sewer pipe entering a culvert beneath the trail. The pipe is 7 feet in diameter and carries roughly 2.6 million gallons of wastewater a day during dry weather to the county's treatment plant in Renton. No public health risk was identified, but the fix has been anything but quick.
The trail closed between Northeast 52nd Street and 108th Avenue Northeast starting around January 5, 2026, for the initial repair. By mid-February, the county reported the pipe work complete and the trail reopening. Then, on March 24, the same segment closed again for continued work near Northeast 52nd. It reopened once more. Then, this past August, the county's project page started flagging a new phase, a culvert and retaining-wall rehabilitation requiring an environmental review, with construction beginning in early August. On September 8, the full closure returned, this time billed as a three-month shutdown rather than a matter of weeks.
Do the math from that start date and the earliest realistic reopening lands around early December. That's not a guess pulled from a press release headline. It's the county's own stated duration applied to its own stated start date.
A different closure, already finished
Here's where residents can stop worrying about one thing that's actually resolved. A separate section of the corridor, near Northeast 85th Street closer to downtown and the Google campus, spent months closed for construction of a pedestrian bridge tied to the I-405 Bus Rapid Transit project. That closure had nothing to do with sewer pipes. According to Eastrail's own spring construction update, that segment was expected to reopen by late June 2026, and it has stayed open since.
The closures have affected different parts of the corridor: the southern stretch toward the South Kirkland Park and Ride is closed again, while a separate central section had its own unrelated disruption and is now open. If your daily route is the downtown-to-Google-campus stretch, September brought no new news for you. If your route runs further south toward the park and ride, you're currently blocked for the third time this year.
Detour information for the current closure
Last year's Northeast 85th Street closure came with real specificity: two posted detours, one ADA accessible via 6th Street and one shorter gravel cut-through a block east on Northeast 87th Street. Riders and walkers had exact turn-by-turn options because the city and Eastrail published them.
The current King County project page is thinner on that front. It lists "a trail detour" among the impacts of construction but doesn't spell out which streets that means, at least not in what the county has published so far. That's worth knowing before you show up expecting a marked route the way you'd find one for a typical city sidewalk closure. Watch for posted signage on site rather than assuming a mapped detour exists somewhere online.
A Kirkland podcast host summed up the general mood well when yet another months-long CKC closure was announced last year on the local show This Week in Kirkland: "Detours will be posted on-site, and that closure will be happening for several months there." That's become close to an annual refrain for anyone who relies on this trail.
How people are actually rerouting
The trail's own address gives away one workaround. The Cross Kirkland Corridor's southern access point sits on 6th Street S, which runs roughly parallel to the closed segment. Walkers and runners who don't need gravel underfoot have been shifting over to that street for the duration.
Cyclists have another option built into the city's broader network. Kirkland's road cycling routes include a stretch of the Lake Washington Loop, which runs on paved streets near the lake and effectively parallels the corridor's southern half. It's not gravel and it's not car-free, but it gets you past the closure without backtracking.
If you're picking up the trail from the north end instead of pushing through the closed middle, Metro's Route 250 stops near the Northeast 85th Street and Kirkland Way access point, which sits north of the current closure zone. That's useful if your plan is to start a ride or run from the Totem Lake side and simply not go as far south this fall.
None of this restores the missing half-mile. It just means the closure doesn't have to end your outdoor routine, only reshape it for the next few months.
Why this stretch is closed again
The Cross Kirkland Corridor is a converted rail line. Kirkland bought this 5.75-mile section of the old Eastside Rail Corridor from the Port of Seattle in 2012 for 5 million dollars, and the interim gravel trail opened not long after. Underneath the compacted surface, though, the corridor still carries the same utility easements it always has, including a King County sewer interceptor that predates the trail itself.
That's the part worth sitting with. The trail's recreational surface and the county's wastewater infrastructure share the same footprint, and when the infrastructure needs attention, the trail closes, because there's no way to dig up a 7-foot sewer pipe without shutting down whatever sits on top of it. The northern stretch through the Totem Lake Business District, past spots like Chainline Brewing, doesn't sit above the same aging interceptor section, which is part of why it hasn't seen anywhere near this level of repeat disruption.
What this means if you use the trail regularly
If your loop or commute touches the stretch between Northeast 52nd Street and 108th Avenue Northeast, plan on rerouting through early December at the earliest, and don't be surprised if the timeline slips the way it has twice already this year. If your route stays north of that zone, closer to downtown or Totem Lake, you're working with a trail that's actually been stable since June.
The corridor as a whole isn't going anywhere. It remains a 5.75-mile stretch connecting the South Kirkland Park and Ride to the Totem Lake Business District, and it's still free, flat, and open for most of its length right now. The difference this fall is knowing which half-mile to skip, and for how long.
If you're planning runs, rides, or dog walks around this closure and want to know what else changes in Kirkland before it hits the news feed, reach out to Sam Burke Real Estate. Sam works and walks these same streets and is glad to talk through what's actually happening on the ground, trail included.
