This week, Seattle’s Sound Transit will start drilling a $2 billion, three-mile light-rail tunnel to connect the University of Washington, Capitol Hill and Westlake Center. The first TBM will be christened today near UW’s Husky Stadium and will drill the southbound tunnel towards capital hill. Another TBM will start in parallel with the first in June, excavating the northbound tunnel. A third TBM will come into service later to excavate the first tube of the 1-mile route from Capital Hill to Westlake center. It will be extracted from a pit at the end of the bore, and returned to dig the other parallel tube. [Source: Seattle Times Newspaper via ASCE SmartBrief. Image: Alan Berner / The Seattle Times]
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Centennial of NY Grand Central Station…And What the Future Holds
New York’s famous transportation icon, Grand Central Station (more properly Grand Central Terminal) celebrated the 100th anniversary of it’s opening on February 2, 2013. This rail terminal is more than just a means of travelling from point A to B, but it is a romantic, and grandiose metaphor for the hustle and bustle of American life. While the structure is definitely a cultural and architectural monument, it is also an engineering marvel, a fact recognized in 2012 by ASCE when it named it a National Civil Engineering Historic Landmark.
While the centennial of the GCT is being celebrated, a new project is taking shape approximately 90 feet below the existing tracks. The East Side Access project (ESA) will provide a new connection from the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to GCT. This project will help…
[Editor] Click through for the rest of this article, including a list of some interesting websites on Grand Central Terminal and the East Side Access Project. [/Editor]