When will all 21 miles of this busy Pierce County trail reopen? Here’s what is ahead
Update: The 136th Street crossing near the McMillin Trailhead opened Jan. 30, according to Pierce County’s website.
Initial post: It has been a busy construction year on the Foothills Trail, and it’ll be some time before bikers and pedestrians will be able to travel all the way between Puyallup and Buckley again.
Ongoing accessibility work near McMillin and a damaged bridge east of South Prairie prompted closures in recent months.
“We’ve got 21 miles of trail and a lot of bridges,” Pierce County Parks trail coordinator Brianne Blackburn said Thursday.
That means a lot of maintenance and upkeep.
“Our primary goal is to have a safe and accessible system,” Blackburn said. “... We just ask for patience.”
Why is the Spiketon Ditch Bridge closed?
A routine inspection found damage to the top chord of the Spiketon Ditch Bridge in July near Cascade Junction, east of South Prairie. Another inspection confirmed that, and crews closed the bridge Nov. 28. Now the county is waiting for a report from a specialist in wood trusses, which Blackburn expects will be available in January.
That report will have a better description of the damage and recommendations about what it will take to fix it, Blackburn said.
Until that assessment, Blackburn said, the county doesn’t have a good timeline or cost estimate for reopening the bridge.
What’s happening between Military Road and 136th Street?
Another recent closure is the mile or so between Military Road and 136th Street, near the McMillin trailhead, for crews to make accessibility improvements. The work was supposed to take a few weeks but is lasting longer than expected.
Pierce County Parks design and construction project manager Jud Youell said the closure started in mid-October. The Military Road crossing opened a couple weeks ago, but the 136th Street crossing is still closed. They don’t have a date for reopening, but are targeting January. Youell said asphalt has been removed and concrete has been poured. The project is making the approaches from the trail to the street crossing compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act by changing the grading to make the trail more accessible.
The changes follow results the county received from a 2017 ADA audit.
“Our goal is to make parks and trail systems as accessible as possible to as many people as possible,” Blackburn said.
When the county reopens the 136th Street crossing depends on weather and coordination between the contractor and subcontractor, Youell said.
Part of the delay with the work on this stretch of the trail was a “difference of opinion,” between plan reviewers and field inspectors that “had to do with grading and layout and traffic control,” Youell said.
The cost of the ADA work at 136th Street, Military Road, and a little ADA work at the South Prairie trailhead is about $150,000 to $170,000, Youell said.
When will the East Puyallup trailhead reopen?
Work at the East Puyallup trailhead started in September. It isn’t closing the trail, but the parking lot is closed during construction. When the trailhead reopens in mid-February, the lot will have 81 stalls. It used to have 26.
The $1.1 million project also includes landscaping and lighting improvements, drainage work and work to make the restrooms at the Puyallup and McMillin trailheads more accessible, among other things.
What projects are next on the Foothills Trail?
Shayla Miles, executive director of the nonprofit Foothills Rails-to-Trails Coalition, said Wednesday, Dec. 20, that the recent projects are important for the trail to be safe and accessible.
“I feel confident that the county is doing their best to move this along because they don’t want the trail closed any more than we do,” Miles said.
Miles noted two other big projects for the trail next year: the completion of a pedestrian bridge over the White River that will connect Buckley and Enumclaw and the groundbreaking of a new trailhead in Buckley.
Replacement of the Ski Park Bridge between Orting and South Prairie is another project in the trail’s future but isn’t expected to happen before 2026.
It was closed during work hours for a couple days in August for geotechnical drilling.
The bridge is about 3.5 miles from the Orting trailhead and 4 miles from the South Prairie one, the press release about that closure said.
Trail users can get updates about projects and closures by visiting piercecountywa.gov/1384/Foothills-Trail. Users can also sign up for email updates at piercecountywa.gov/list.aspx?ListID=1670. The Foothills Rails-to-Trails Coalition posts updates at facebook.com/FoothillsRailsToTrailsCoalition/.
This story was originally published December 24, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
