Countdowns: Lynnwood Link (August 30).
Transit Updates:
This weekend (June 1-2) has several Link reductions. Columbia City station will be single-tracked. Every other train will terminate at Stadium and not go further south, giving 10-minute frequency north of Stadium and 20-minute frequency south. Link will be closed between SeaTac and Angle Lake stations; passengers can use RapidRide A as an alternative. Additional work at SeaTac is ongoing through June 25. This all is to connect the East Link and Federal Way Link segments to the mainline, and to repair tiles at Columbia City station. The James Street Pioneer Square station entrance is closed through June 7 to install a display sign, although the elevator is open.
Discovery Park bus shuttle. A free shuttle bus runs within the park on Saturdays through September 7th. It connects the North, East, and Beach parking lots. Buses run every 30 minutes between 11am and 5:30pm, with the last run from the beach at 5:15pm. Metro route 33 terminates near the east lot. Route 24 terminates at the south entrance, which is not on the shuttle.
Sound Transit will start checking fares on Link platforms ($) on June 3, in addition to checking on trains.
Sound Transit declines to move SLU Station ($) from 7th to 5th.
Free youth fares extend to Amtrak Cascades ($). People 18 and under can ride free within Washington state. You must get a ticket in advance, not at a kiosk, and people under 16 must ride with an adult.
Local News
A Dutch-style bicycle-friendly intersection ($) at Dexter & Thomas, a first in Seattle.
KUOW’s Week in Review panel is negative on Julie Timm’s post-CEO consulting position. (Episode May 24, starting at the -3:42 mark (counting from the end, the only timestamp available).)
Spokane allows tiny house subdivisions ($).
Miscellaneous
Crowdfunding affordable housing. ($) Groups of people around the country are turning to self-funding to build affordable apartments in their community. Some buildings also accommodate various other uses (short-term rentals, hotel, restaurant, performing arts, coworking, offices, school).
Several robotaxi companies are under federal investigation over flaws leading to crashes ($).
Portland TV on the MAX downtown tunnel proposal. (video, 11 minutes)
This is an open thread.
If Portland ever does the tunnel I would hope they’d belly north and a little west to have a station adjacent to the Pearl District at Ninth and Johnson. It would help with the grade down from Lloyd Center to pass under the Willamette.
It should do the same thing at the south as well. Belly south as far as Columbia to have a station for PSU and the Arts District.
Four stations is right: Pearl District, Sixth and Burnside, Pioneer Square and Eighth and Columbia.
> Portland TV on the MAX downtown tunnel proposal. (video, 11 minutes)
I’ve read about the proposal back in 2019.
Its got two main rationales increased capacity across the river and faster speed through downtown Portland. Though there are two large caveats which are probably why it hasn’t been implemented yet
1) most of the time max light rail doesn’t even run up to its capacity limits. Only at peak times (I think only for like one/two hour?) does it use all of the steel bridge bottleneck
2) a lot of the time savings are really just by removing the too many stops the light rail takes. Max has already moved forward with removing 3 stops and might remove a fourth stop downtown
3) lastly a bit harder to quantify but in general I think max has been having a hard time convincing this to the public. It’s not like the la regional connector that merged two separate light rail lines together. Especially compared to the high cost 5ish billion.
Or at least that’s the impression I got from the news website and Reddit comments back then, where people were asking for just building another steel bridge or more expansions before a tunnel
I still think a subway/elevated right of way should be built but I don’t know why they want to only move the blue line and not the red one into the new proposed tunnel, it really hampers the speed increase for many transit trips. The green and the yellow oddly can’t quite use the tunnel as well.
If they are going to build a tunnel they should at least make sure 2/3 lines can use it rather than just one
Yes, I’ve wondered that too, WL.
Not only would a tunnel save riders crosstown travel time, but the frequency of an entire line can be maintained with fewer train sets. If the cost of a tunnel is already incurred, getting a second line in there seems like a modest additional cost and huge potential benefit.
However, Portland feels much more “centralized” than Seattle does. So maybe one line is all that’s needed.
The true bottleneck to me appears to be the Steel Bridge. I wonder if merely building a new adjacent bridge would be enough. Of course a new crossing may have be to be excessively high, making a tunnel more desirable.
A final issue is the tunnel depth. If the tunnel is cut and cover nearer to the surface, it’s easier to use for shorter trips. It’s the deep bored tunnels that are awful for those trips. Just look at the lousy ridership coming from the new SF Central Subway and its deep tunnel.
Al, it will be bored because it has to cross the street grid diagonally in places, and it has to be very deep under the Rose Quarter to under-run the Willamette.
@Al S,
“ If the tunnel is cut and cover”
Almost nobody does cut and cover anymore, and certainly not for longer tunnels.
Cut and cover is simply too expensive and too disruptive. Additionally, cut and cover eliminates two of the key advantages of tunneling – namely the ability to go cross-grid and to be free of surface topography.
Far better to do what ST tries to do when circumstances allow. Use bored tunnels between stations but cut and cover at the stations. This method preserves the advantages of tunneling while still producing reasonably shallow stations.
And don’t forget, part of the justification for the tunnel is to relieve pressure on the Steel Bridge by removing lines from it. And that means going under the Willamette. And nobody is going to cut and cover across the Willamette. That section, and the approaches to it, will be bored.
So if roughly a third of your new tunnel needs to be bored anyhow, no rational agency would do the other 2/3’s using cut and cover. Best just run the TBM’s a bit farther. After all, you’ve already paid for them.
A combination of bored and cut and cover is always technically possible.
I would expect the segment to get under the river to be bored.
I think the City of Portland’s recent population loss since 2020 (the Census Bureau estimates 22K fewer residents) is contributing to a vibe that change is needed.
The City of Seattle has gained 18K new residents since the 2020 Census according to the 2023 estimates.
@Al S,
Of course a hybrid construction method is technically possible, but what is the point? Combining cut and cover with bored would be hugely more expensive than just completely the tunnel fully bored. And there would be no advantage to adding cut and cover. None.
And Portland isn’t going to shut down 10 or 15 blocks of downtown businesses for multiple years just to pursue an antiquated cut and cover technology with no real benefit and higher costs. Particularly after TriMet already had to invest in all the overhead to do bored tunnels under the Willamette anyhow. Just ain’t going to happen.
> The true bottleneck to me appears to be the Steel Bridge. I wonder if merely building a new adjacent bridge would be enough. Of course a new crossing may have be to be excessively high, making a tunnel more desirable.
They studied it in back in 2018. Building a new bridge was estimated around 300~400 million, I guess around 800 million now considering inflation and the post pandemic cost increases, but vastly cheaper than the ~5 billion for a tunnel
https://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/2019/06/27/SBTI_final_memo_022018.pdf
A tunnel would decrease travel time because it wouldn’t be limited to the speed limit, stoplights, street grid, or cars just slightly in the way for a moment when the train wants to go. It would also allow longer trains, as I think the main limiting factor is the small downtown blocks. Outside downtown the lines are mostly in their own right of way. Look at what Germany does or what Seattle did in the 1980s: tunnel downtown, surface elsewhere.
At the Steel Bridge, the Willamette is some 67 feet deep, depending on the season and tide. It’s another 30 or so vertical feet from river surface to the bus stops at Rose Quarter. This means anyone needing to transfer from the tunnel to the surface is going to have some 10 minutes or so added to their travel time. The longer trips will be faster in a tunnel, for certain, but an awful lot of downtown Portland trips are fairly short, and/or a short section of a longer trip. Eg, MAX is typically the fastest option to get from PSU to a cross-mall route, such as 6, 14, 15 or MAX blue or red lines.
This, by the way, is another reason to roite the line near the Hawthorne bridge: the river isn’t as deep and the ground surface to river surface is much lower, so the stations wouldn’t be so deep.
You make an important point, Glenn. That’s the point I was getting at too. Deep stations add travel time for a rider. What good does it do when a rider may reduce a train ride by 10 minutes by using a deep subway, but then loses those 10 minutes making the effort to walk through two deep stations ( unlike merely riding) — and risking the potential of at least one of the vertical conveyances being out of service.
I often see plans based on deep bored tunnel rail stations. I see very little to no discussion about the effort and time penalty to use them. Instead they only brag about how much faster the train would be.
Rail planning outside of surface tracks and stations often avoids discussing it as 3-D experience, which is what it is in reality.
@Al S,
There isn’t any significant difference in the station depth for a cut and cover stations on bored tunnels vs cut and cover tunnels. They are essentially the same depth.
Deep stations are usually the result of other considerations, such as min-clearance under existing geological or physical infrastructure. That is why Husky Stadium Station is so deep, because the tunnels needed to go under the Montlake Cut. Cut and cover would not change that. It’s geometry.
> There isn’t any significant difference in the station depth for a cut and cover stations on bored tunnels vs cut and cover tunnels. They are essentially the same depth.
That isn’t quite true.
1) Cut and cover tunnel / cut and cover stations are usually only 20/30 feet deep. Though does involving moving lots of utilities.
2) Cut and cover stations / bored tunnels are usually around 50 ish feet. Going under the utilities.
3) Mined stations (off street) / bored tunnels it’s a bit more varied but can be like 80+ feet.
1) examples are like nyc or even the https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/11/02/west-seattle-station-planning/ avalon station retained cut one is kind of an example.
2) The san jose bart extension originally had much shallower stations using cut and cover.
3) mined stations off street have to be even deeper. Actually this is also partly why it is so deep as they are planning on using a large single bore machine this time rather than twin boring machines.
> Deep stations are usually the result of other considerations, such as min-clearance under existing geological or physical infrastructure.
I do agree in this case (portland max tunnel) it’d need to go under the river so the stations besides the west most one probably would need to start diving deeper to go under the river. In other cases though it’s more about avoiding car impacts aka san jose easily could have built it cut and cover and saved 4~5 billion dollars aka an entire east link.
@WL,
Not true. Bored tunnels with in-street cut and cover stations also move the utilities, just like with cut and cover tunnels. The only difference is that with bored tunnels they only need to move the utilities in the vicinity of the station. But the depths are essentially the same.
Most of ST’s cut and cover stations with bored tunnels so far have not been in-street. They have been adjacent to the street. This has been done to avoid the disruption of fully closing a city street for multiple years. But it also means that the depth of these stations is set by the need to pass under adjacent infrastructure, not by the min-traveling depth of the TBM.
This is true of ST cut and cover stations at Cap Hill, U-Dist, and Roosevelt. In all these cases the depth was set by the need to pass under the basements of adjacent buildings. If these stations had been in the street they wouldn’t need to be as deep.
It should also be noted that small differences in depth have essentially no impact on usability. If the difference in final depth between two station designs is only on the order of 10 to 15 feet, the end user is likely to not even notice the difference.
But neither ST, nor TriMet, nor any other agency, is likely to go back to building cut and cover tunnels in urban environments. It is simply too disruptive. Even just building a cut and cover station in-street is usually considered to be too disruptive. Ain’t going to happen.
@Lazarus
> Not true. Bored tunnels with in-street cut and cover stations also move the utilities, just like with cut and cover tunnels. The only difference is that with bored tunnels they only need to move the utilities in the vicinity of the station. But the depths are essentially the same.
Lazarus, cut and cover tunnels are shallower than bored tunnels + cut and cover stations. If you would like to cite some examples of that being contrary you’re welcome to, but I doubt you’ll find any. The depths are not the same, the a main point of using bored tunnels is to go under the utilities, if they were the same depth we wouldn’t be using bored tunnels.
> Most of ST’s cut and cover stations with bored tunnels so far have not been in-street. They have been adjacent to the street. This has been done to avoid the disruption of fully closing a city street for multiple years.
Uhhh… while the former statement about the station being adjacent to the street is true, the u district, roosevelt, capital hill station etc… did close the city intersections for multiple years.
Roosevelt station closed street intersection for like ~5 years? https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6593824,-122.3144187,3a,75y,345.24h,67.48t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sLXxBPZWCu4AjFPpn1uj5tA!2e0!5s20140601T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DLXxBPZWCu4AjFPpn1uj5tA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D345.24014006515034%26pitch%3D22.524992218827023%26thumbfov%3D90!7i13312!8i6656?coh=205410&entry=ttu
> But neither ST, nor TriMet, nor any other agency, is likely to go back to building cut and cover tunnels in urban environments. It is simply too disruptive.
Sure, I am expecting cut and cover tunnels either.
> Even just building a cut and cover station in-street is usually considered to be too disruptive. Ain’t going to happen.
Most of the ballard link stations (seattle center, slu, denny, etc…) are going to be built cut and cover and going to close the street for at least ~4 years right, the mined stations (westlake, midtown, chinatown) will close the street intersections for ~4 years as well.
Meant to say “Sure, I am not expecting cut and cover tunnels either.”
@WL,
In-street utilities just aren’t that deep. This is done because they are usually installed from the surface, and need to be accessed and maintained from the surface.
Additionally, they are usually reinstalled in a linear/contiguous manner after station construction. Meaning usually the station is under the utilities regardless of station construction method. And the depths end up being similar.
As per ST closing streets for street adjacent station construction, it is rare and limited to minor streets.
For Roosevelt they closed 66th for the duration of construction, but 66th spanned the station box and keeping it open was not an option. And it is a very minor street whose closure had essentially zero impact on local traffic.
Likewise at U-Dist Station the closure of Brooklyn had relatively minor impact, which is part of the reason ST sited the station as they did. And it was better than taking adjacent businesses via eminent domain for construction staging.
And I’m sure ST will close minor streets for construction in the future. But again, they will be minor streets. ST will not close major streets or arterials for multiple years for station construction.
And TriMet certainly won’t close miles of DT Portland’s streets for years for cut and cover tunnel construction. Ain’t going to happen.
The underground utility situation in downtown Portland is well understood to be a real tangle. The original sewer system were brick with no mortar, and would create huge sinkholes from time to time. In fact, one of the first streetcar carbarns was completely destroyed when it collapsed into one of these.
I’ve been told by someone at the engineering department at Northwest Natural that the gas lines in the downtown area is a huge tangle, and the people who designed it have been gone for 130 years.
So I’m not sure about the underground utilities not being that deep. In some places they have to be.
@Lazarus
> In-street utilities just aren’t that deep. This is done because they are usually installed from the surface, and need to be accessed and maintained from the surface.
Lazarus I don’t know where you’ve gotten this mistaken belief from that cut and cover tunnel isn’t shallower than bored tunnels with cut and cover stations. You can look at the new york cut and cover stations being much shallower or even the paris ones. Even Link’s own ‘trenched’ stations for example spring district are basically the same thing and are much shallower. Perhaps it might help your argument if you could cite some real life examples of bored tunnel ones being the same depth as the cut and cover tunnels.
> As per ST closing streets for street adjacent station construction, it is rare and limited to minor streets.
Sure that is fine, but the point is that street closures will still happen. I would just like to remind people that subway construction even if not cut and cover on the street and placed adjacent will still have impacts. And even if mined down from a separate site at great expense will still have street impacts. It is not magic to build a subway station.
> But again, they will be minor streets. ST will not close major streets or arterials for multiple years for station construction.
ST will literally close multiple major streets for 4+ years to construct many of these stations, they are all listed in the DEIS. https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/3-wsble-drafteis-chapter3-transportation-202201.pdf
Some examples:
* Dakota alternative: close 25th avenue for 4 years
* Preferred 41st tunnel station: close 35th Avenue SW for 4 years, 36th Avenue Southwest for 4 years and 41st ave for 4 years
* new sodo station: close South Holgate Street for 3 years
* chinatown:
* closed for 2~6 years 2nd Avenue extension;
* closed for 4 years 4th Avenue South
* downtown
* 4th avenue partial to full closures for 2~4 years
* 5th Avenue partial to full closures for 2~6 years
* harrison street full closure for 4 years
* pine street full closure for 6 years or pike street for 4 years
* westlake avenue full closure for 4 years
etc…
The year range and exact street depends on the alternative.
Anyways I have no idea why people keep thinking subway construction is some magical thing. You’ll need to close roads down to build the stations. If not complete closures for 4 years then it’s still like closing half the road for 8 years. I will note this mistake is not made by just you but by many others.
We might be able to limit road closures to a smaller amount than other nations due to prioritizing car. But imagining one can limit it to nothing is out of budget even for sound transit’s already expensive building methods.
> And TriMet certainly won’t close miles of DT Portland’s streets for years for cut and cover tunnel construction. Ain’t going to happen.
Sure, that’s fine I understand cut and cover tunneling isn’t going to be used and it needs to cross the river. But that doesn’t mean in general it isn’t shallower than bore tunnel + cut and cover station in other situations.
> And I’m sure ST will close minor streets for construction in the future. But again, they will be minor streets. ST will not close major streets or arterials for multiple years for station construction.
For the road closure impacts it’s as I listed above. And one major problem with trying to maintain the roads open with it partially open is now it takes much longer to build the station. For example the westlake shifted north one, rather than taking 4 years to build it, the alternative would allow the road to be partially open but now take 8 years. One is really just spreading the pain out over time but not really limiting the total amount of time it is going to be closed.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/08/21/seattles-170-million-wager-to-reduce-light-rail-construction-impacts-on-westlake-avenue/
I mean some would argue that the tunnel is a benefit to also rebuilding and rearranging utility lines in Downtown Portland. Tunnel costs a lot but also is doing necessary infrastructure work the city may end up needing to do anyway in the next decade or so which make it less of a bitter pill to swallow in killing two birds with one stone. We’ve seen a similar situation with KCMs G Line where the project was an excuse to pull out and rebuild old utility lines that were reaching end of life usefulness on First Hill.
The Portland Tunnel would likely if it was to get built a mix of cut and cover and bored tunnels due to the geography from Llyod Center to Goose Hollow and what is along the line like crossing Willamette River and I-405 trench.
The only other question is the construction length to build the tunnel.
@All,
I stand by what I wrote. There just isn’t any significant difference in in-street station depth when using the two techniques.
But this is why ST and TriMet employ real engineers, of which there are obviously very few on this blog.
> But this is why ST and TriMet employ real engineers, of which there are obviously very few on this blog.
I quite handily refuted your earlier statement that Sound Transit is not planning on closing major roads so I’m not sure why are you maintaining such superiority over others.
Secondly, a real engineer who is unable to cite a single example proving your point is not a very useful one.
Glenn, so you would have a tunnel which just crossed downtown Portland across Jefferson? I just don’t think that would fly. Downtown Portland stretches from the south end of SoDo and Marquam Hill to the Pearl District but is only about twelve blocks wide. Seventy percent of downtown-bound riders couldn’t use it or would have to transfer to a Mall bus or the Orange=Yellow line.
I get the much greater constructibility and the value of serving the Division corridor. But downtown businesses would oppose it strongly.
Would routing it to the Hawthorne Bridge allow a station in the Hawthorne district? That was one loss of routing it to so far north. Would it mean abandoning the Lloyd district, which is immediately east of the river? Or would the train turn north to the Lloyd district and its regular stations, thus adding a south-then-north detour?
@WL,
“ but I don’t know why they want to only move the blue line and not the red one into the new proposed tunnel”
Optics and politics.
The surface running Blue and Red lines through DT Portland represent a fair amount of infrastructure, and I think Tri-Met would be reticent to fully abandon that infrastructure. It just is not a good look for a transit agency to abandon that much prime infrastructure, and to spend $5+ billion to do it.
Additionally, those DT Portland surface stops on the Red and Blue have an established ridership base, and a lot of that ridership base will be PO’d to see their favorite stops disappear in favor of a tunnel. Angry constituents make for bad politics, and angry constituents are also less likely to vote for funding to make this happen. So one of these two lines will remain on the surface.
That said, maybe there could be a happy middle ground of putting the Red and Blue into the tunnel while keeping the old surface infrastructure active by running a new turnback line on it. Details TBD. But hey, that is what studies are for.
And at least Portland is now acknowledging that they have fallen behind and need to make some changes. That is progress of a sort.
Going cheap only gets you so far, eventually you still have to pay the piper.
The stops would likely stay as is as their respective distance is far enough from each other to make the tunnel work. The main difference would be moving it underground instead of being surface. I also doubt you’d see many po’d people towards the tunnel. People dislike the downtown section from Rose Quarter to Goose Hollow for being slow as molasses. It’s not a pleasant or speedy trip through downtown for a trip that ends up being 15-20+ minutes when it should be more realistically half that.
The tunnel would become what is a fixture of Tram or Light Rail systems in Europe as a premetro or stadtbahn. Would it be nice if it was half that cost, sure but getting trains off the Steel Bridge would be a net benefit for riders.
@Zach B,
There would be fewer stations with the tunnel. Much fewer. It’s one of the key attributes of the proposal.
“It just is not a good look for a transit agency to abandon that much prime infrastructure, and to spend $5+ billion to do it.”
The New York City subway was elevated before it was underground. London has several track segments and stations that were abandoned during line extensions and restructures. I think Chicago and New York have some too. The point is you’re improving transit, or doing what should have been done in the first place. The biggest issue is good transit mobility, not preserving legacy infrastructure. It costs $5 billion because it’s a tunnel and it’s in the United States. The value of the tunnel doesn’t stand or fall based on whether a surface track previously existed or gets abandoned. If the tunnel is worth it and a major benefit to Portland, it’s worth it regardless of whether the surface track is abandoned.
Not building a downtown Portland tunnel means leaving passengers with grossly substandard transit for decades longer. Passengers and the city have already suffered enough. Build it.
> And at least Portland is now acknowledging that they have fallen behind and need to make some changes. That is progress of a sort.
The problem is that for 5 billion it has relatively minor benefits compared to building a second steel bridge/expanding it.
The study analyzed that building/expanding the existing bridge to quad track would cost 400~500 million and that would effectively double the capacity across the river as well.
For the speed benefits of around 11 minutes half of that is from eliminating the stations so really the tunnel benefit is only 5 minutes. Basically for 4.5 billion dollars they shave off 5 minutes off only 1 max line. It just seems quite minor benefit versus the very large cost for the proposed tunnel.
For context here were the studies https://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/2019/06/27/SBTI_final_memo_022018.pdf
and
https://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/2019/10/25/MAX%20Tunnel%20Study%20Findings.pdf
> Going cheap only gets you so far, eventually you still have to pay the piper.
Just because the plan is expensive does not necessarily prove that it is good etiher.
I would like to reiterate I am not against the idea of speeding up the portland max through downtown, but for the plan to only situate one of the lines 1 of 4 for such a high cost seems poor.
> Additionally, those DT Portland surface stops on the Red and Blue have an established ridership base, and a lot of that ridership base will be PO’d to see their favorite stops disappear in favor of a tunnel. Angry constituents make for bad politics, and angry constituents are also less likely to vote for funding to make this happen. So one of these two lines will remain on the surface.
I understand that, but then what exactly is the point of the tunnel?
1) if it is for capacity, building a new rail bridge is exponentially cheaper. One could literally build 3~4 more light rail lines and still have left over money for a rail bridge instead of this tunnel.
2) if it is for speed, it will really only provide around ~5/6 minutes of benefit. Max itself has already partially attained some of the travel time decreases by eliminating 3 downtown stations. Is 5 billion or aka 3~4 light rail lines for a 5 minute speed up of just the blue line?
I do see an option to extend the tunnel north/south to include the green, though no cost estimates are included, and it would not work for the yellow either.
Like for the same cost as east link or as the la regional connector the lack of substantial benefits from even typically rosy studies does not look good.
WL, I generally agree with your assessment. I’ve got no strong opinion what the capacity and speed enhancements should be.
I will say that system expansion should look at what each segment’s capacity needs to be before chasing after billions. For example, should the trains between the Airport and Clakamas Town Center be on a crosstown line so the I-84 segment can be a higher frequency to Downtown? Those branches look like good candidates for shorter automated trains as a combined new line with 8-10 minute frequency, and Gateway could be a key hub to a higher frequency blue line, This is the ST 4 Line concept
Also, the stops around downtown are quite close, like less than 1000 feet between the platform ends. The distance from Lloyd Center and Steel Bridge is less than a mile but there are four stops. Stop consolidation would seem to be the easiest thing to do. Note that the stops were chosen before there was a Portland Streetcar.
I’m surprised that elevated options didn’t get more seriously considered. A new Willamette light rail bridge would likely need to be higher, which could allow for adjacent tracks to be aerial too — and that would facilitate station consolidation.
With no urgent referendum assembly on the table, they have time to assess things objectively. If they want to be trendsetters, they should be looking to automated trains and needed train capacity though.
I’m not sure how much a tunnel would benefit the existing MAX lines. It’s slow, but the tunnel would need to be awfully deep in a lot of places. This means getting form train to surface wouldn’t be especially fast.
That’s probably why only the blue line would be in the tunnel: it would be sorta a limited stop service that would go from the Far East end to the far west end. If you’re going to one of the downtown stations, it’d be faster to take one of the surface lines due to the access time problem, but if you’re going from Hollywood to Beaverton or whatever, you can skip many of the downtown stations and save time.
If they’re going to spend $5 billion on a tunnel, I’d prefer to see one that adds service. Eg: route the red line south to Division on the green line and put the tunnel through southeast Portland. Surface transit through this area is really slow, and unlike the surface MAX route on NE Halladay there isn’t anywhere to take two lanes and create a dedicated two track private right of way. Except for Powell (too far south, and besides it’s US 26 so no way to tear it up) every street through Southeast is only two lanes wide. The benefit over surface transit would be felt vastly more there than along NE Halladay.
What happens downtown, Glenn? Would you have the tunnel surface at the east end of the LR bridge and use the north-south mall? That severs Beaverton from the airport and Nike and Intel would each have a cow.
To get through downtown from the Steel Bridge, you have to go north-south somehow, diagonally or under one of the streets.
It’s actually a straighter shot to get to the West Hills tunnel by going straight at it from the Hawthorne Bridge.
So, just cut across the transit mall pretty much like the 6, 10 and 14 do.
From what I understand, it is to address the operational issues with the Steel Bridge as it often becomes a choke point on the MAX system from slowdown, rail accidents on either deck, or operational delays and it being the crossing for every line on the system has a ripple effects on the schedule if slowdown occurs on top of speeds on the Steel Bridge being already slow crossing it. You see similar tunnels like this in Europe with Stadtbahn in Germany, Premetro in Beligum, etc.
I think it’s also recognition from Trimet that building a tunnel would improve and rebuild ridership by turning the system into something more appealing for not just suburb to downtown travel but also suburb to suburb travel with a faster thru downtown connection than what currently exists. It’d also allow them to not be as capacity limited as currently stands with 2 car length trains die to the constraints of Downtown Portland block sizes.