I’ve been giving some though as to how a future LINK station here would work, given Aurora passes over Hwy. 99. Currently people wanting to take the Aurora buses are forced to walk up to Aurora from the appropriate side, given that Aurora is a divided highway here. What I think would be cool is elevators going directly up to either side of Aurora from the underground station. That way people could just step off the elevator and right onto the bus without having to walk up any outdoor stairs or ramps:
Maybe someone else can speak to the technical complexities that this would involve.
Obviously those elevators couldn’t be the only entrances to the subway. So where to place the “main entrance”. This is tough, as there doesn’t appear to be much open space available. If ST could keep the above-ground footprint at an absolute bare minimum (and examples like Roosevelt Station suggest they can’t), I guess the place to put the entrance would be this little triangle on the south side of 46th:
This station would present some challenges not found elsewhere. Does anyone else have any insight on how to design it?
Maybe we can start with some actual signage for where the bus stops are? When I lived near that intersection, I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell people where to catch the 358/E from the 44 (“go up that sketchy staircase, oh, you want to go north rather than south? Then walk under the sketchy bridge and then go up the sketchy staircase on the other side”), even after the brightly-lit RR stops went in.
If the line ever gets built, this will be one of the most important stops on it. Not only should it serve buses from SR 99, but it should serve the neighborhood as well as buses headed towards lower Fremont and Phinney Ridge. This means that it should have entrances on Fremont Avenue as well as Aurora.
I would assume that a UW to Ballard tunnel would be deep bore. This means you need to dig a tunnel straight down to the other tunnel. There isn’t a lot of room to do that, but I think the area you mentioned (next to the highway) would probably work. You would have to close off the ramp for a few years (while they dug the station) but that would be about it. Elevators straight up to the highway level would be ideal and seem quite possible. You could also then have escalators that go up to Fremont (hopefully to both sides of the street). That seems like it would mean a minimal amount of land taken from the neighborhood, which would save some money and reduce controversy. Doing all that wouldn’t be cheap, but it would be worth it. A station that served Aurora as well as the Fremont/Phinney Ridge buses (something like the 5, but altered a bit to just go down Fremont Avenue) would be crucial to the success of this line.
Fremont and 46th has gas stations at the nw and ne corners that could be bought and used for station entrances too. So that end of the station should be easy to make work. It’s the Aurora end that would be hard.