21 & Over | The Burke-Gilman Trail — Where they closed a bike path for a car stunt

On 19 September 2011 the University of Washington told students that a stretch of the Burke-Gilman Trail near Rainier Vista would be closed for a driving stunt, and that a week later a crane would be parked there for a second one. Cyclists were rerouted. That is how the film's chase beats got made.

The trail itself is a piece of railway. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern laid track along this line in 1885; when the trains stopped, the corridor was converted and opened as a public path in 1978, named for the two men who founded the railroad. It now runs roughly thirty kilometres from Ballard around the north end of Lake Washington, and the segment through campus is the busiest — commuters, rowing crews walking to the boathouse, students late for a class on the far side of the university.

It is a strange place to stage a car stunt, because there are no cars on it. That is the joke buried in the geography: the production borrowed a path built specifically to keep vehicles away.

Ride or walk east from the Rainier Vista crossing towards the boathouse. On the left the campus rises; on the right, through the trees, Union Bay opens up with float planes coming down onto Lake Washington. Ten minutes of this and you understand why the university keeps giving film crews permission, and why the cyclists keep objecting.