This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
The northern terminus for the University Link, the station at Husky Stadium is nearing design completion. I saw some of the renderings at the UW open house on Wednesday, but I didn’t stay for the full talk.
The stadium will be mostly underground, as riders will descend 100 feet via several escalators to the station platform. Though there will be a large pedestrian bridge connecting the campus with the entrance near Husky Stadium, to a driver heading down Montlake Blvd. it will be almost invisible.
However, between 2008 and 2014 (or thereabouts), there will be a giant pit in the Husky Stadium parking lot as the station is excavated and built. It will not be a pretty sight. Sound Transit and its contractors are going to do all they can to minimize the mess, but there’s only so much you can do with giant hole in the ground.
On the plus side, ST will use two tunnel boring machines to dig the Northbound and Southbound tunnels between UW and Capitol Hill (the Beacon Hill tunnels were bored one at a time using a single TBM). This will speed up the process considerably.