Some mornings on my way out to work I hear the sound of construction equipment across the road. At long last, the city is building out a section of the Interurban Trail — the stretch between what was once the 110th Street platform and the Bitter Lake station.

People have been using the right-of-way as a walking trail for years, as have a number of homeless people living in the bushes marking the cemetary boundary line. Now there will be a paved trail suitable for strollers and bikers, a crosswalk at 125th, and some improved connections to the Shoreline Interurban Trail segments and the city’s so-called “bike route” that follows Fremont Avenue from Green Lake to the north end.

The Interurban, of course, was Seattle’s first mass transit system, but it ended service in the late 1930s thanks to the completion of the Pacific Highway to Everett and the George Washington Bridge. (You know them better as Highway 99 and the Aurora Bridge.) Other than the right-of-way, some oddly wide alleys in the Greenwood neighborhood, Greenwood Park, Waiting For the Interurban, and the Groveland station turnstile (still working), there’s really no evidence in Seattle that there was ever a light rail line that ran from 8th and Stewart clear to downtown Everett.

The trail is supposed to be finished by the spring, but they’ve been making good time — the first block or so is paved, and the crossing at 125th Street has been created. Soon, the north part of the city will have an alternative to the overcrowded Green Lake walking trail (though most of us have been walking the right-of-way for years anyway).