Puget Sound Transportation Blog

From The News Tribune: http://www.thenewstribune.com/topstories/story/741217.html

“(Gregoires) first budget “delayed to death” many key highway projects in Pierce County. The final one not only speeds up $130 million of car-pool lane construction on Interstate 5, but also lays out a 16-year funding plan to nearly finish the project.

For many other state projects, funding will run out by 2015.”

This is good news. The Tacoma area is getting more crowded and now is the time to build a project such as this.

From The Tacoma News Tribune: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/736720.html

“Washington state and California officials have held preliminary discussions about a high-speed, state-of-the-art rail line that would connect San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., with trains that could travel in excess of 200 miles per hour.

The talks come just weeks after Congress approved a $787 billion economic stimulus bill sought by the White House that included $8 billion for high-speed rail in the Northwest and nine other corridors around the nation.”

This is great news. Having taken high speed rail between Paris and Saarbruecken (in Southern Germany) high speed rail is the way to go for moderate distance travel.

More information: WSDOT High Speed Passenger Rail

Bellevue argues whether to put the East Link line in a tunnel downtown or run it on the surface.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009168122_bellevuetunnel04m.html

The correct, if more expensive and difficult answer, is a tunnel. Running rail at grade inevitably results in problems.

From The Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009118084_webtranspobudget24m.html

It is necessary to add carpool lanes to the I-90 bridges to allow for the closing of the express lanes for Eastside Link. This is good news as delays would push the project out indefinitely.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr104hoodcanalbridgeeast/

Will be closed for 6 weeks to replace the Eastern half. This is the longest floating bridge in the world that spans salt water.

Ben

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2009069602_webhighspeedrail16.html

Obama puts 8 billion towards developing high speed rail corridors. In the Northwest it will benefit the Eugene to Vancouver BC route, allowing the Amtrak Cascades to run closer to its 110 mph design speed.

More: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/712047.html

From The News Tribune:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/721612.html

While as noted in the article this is no longer a major corridor, it will allow some alternate routes from Northeast Tacoma into town, and finally allow the Tacoma Fire station at the bridge easy access to Northeast Tacoma.

Ben

The News Tribune had an interesting article recently about this project:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/topstory/story/718337.html

From KIRO:
http://www.kirotv.com/news/19275966/detail.html#-

Hmm, so this is now the second incident with this line. Hopefully the community learns to live with the trains before they begin service in July.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/topstories/story/716425.html

Lakewood is using a DOD grant to study ways to solve traffic congestion through Fort Lewis, which can be pretty bad, especially on weekends.