"Granddaddy of all trails" could come from land swap

A swap of Boeing Field for an Eastside railway corridor would create "the granddaddy of all trails," a 47-mile Renton-to-Snohomish link with three existing trails.

The trail — proposed last year to be the largest greenway since the Mountains to Sound Greenway — would connect the East Lake Sammamish Trail, the Burke-Gilman Trail and the Centennial Trail.

At a Wednesday news conference, King County Executive Ron Sims called it "the granddaddy of all trails."

Under the proposal, the Port plans to buy the property from the BNSF Railway company and swap it for King County International Airport, better known as Boeing Field, and other property rights. The railway, which BNSF has been trying to sell since 2003, is worth between $100 million and $180 million. The county has not said how much it will cost to build the trail, which the Port of Seattle is expected to pay for.

Without this agreement, Sims said, the county would have to raise taxes to buy the property.

If approved, the new Eastside trail would increase the 150 miles of trails the county already owns by more than 30 percent.

Sims said it wasn't yet decided whether parts of the railway will stay open or whether it will be entirely converted into a trail, but the county's intention is to create a trail backbone on the Eastside.

Eastside city leaders and community members had expressed a desire to buy the railway and turn it into a mass-transit corridor. In 2004, the Puget Sound Regional Council spent $660,000 and 18 months studying the possibility.

On Wednesday, Sims' chief of staff, Kurt Triplett, said the railway is too narrow to support two-way light rail. In some spots, the railway is only 30 feet wide, he said, and widening it would cost several hundred million dollars.

The Spirit of Washington dinner train and some freight currently run along the track, but the dinner train lease expires in a year and has not been renewed, Triplett said.

If the county doesn't purchase it, the railway company can sell it piecemeal, he said. The agreement still requires final negotiation between the Port of Seattle and BNSF and approval by the Metropolitan King County Council and the Puget Sound Regional Council.

"I'm not sure that the [King County] council has a clear idea from the executive branch on exactly how much the corridor is going to cost," said Capital Budget Committee chair and King County Councilman Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle. "That whole concept of purchasing the corridor is very much in the concept stage."

At the news conference, Gene Duvernoy, president of the Cascade Land Conservancy, called the proposed trail "a great, great open space. This is a triple bottom line — community, environment and economy."

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com