The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel is a public transit tunnel for buses
and light rail trains in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It
runs north–south through Downtown Seattle, connecting five stations on
3rd Avenue and Pine Street. It is the busiest section of Sound Transit's
Link light rail network, with an average of over 10,000 weekday train
boardings at the four stations served by light rail. The $469 million
tunnel was planned in the late 1970s and built between 1987 and 1990,
using tunnel boring machines and cut-and-cover excavation. Between 1990
and 2004, the tunnel was exclusively used by dual-mode buses that ran on
overhead wires; they were later replaced with hybrid electric buses
using batteries within the tunnel. After a two-year renovation, the
tunnel reopened on September 24, 2007, and light rail service began in
July 2009, sharing the platforms with existing buses. Planned expansion
of the light rail system, along with the closure of one station, will
necessitate the removal of buses from the tunnel by 2019.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Seattle_Transit_Tunnel>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1645:
English Civil War: Royalists under the personal command of King
Charles I suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of Rowton Heath.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rowton_Heath>
1841:
The Sultan of Brunei granted Sarawak to British adventurer
James Brooke.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Sarawak>
1957:
Barcelona's Camp Nou, currently the largest stadium in Europe
with a seating capacity of 99,354, opened.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Nou>
1992:
Oba Chandler was arrested three years after he committed a
triple murder in Tampa Bay, Florida, U.S., when his neighbor identified
handwriting samples that police had placed on local billboards.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oba_Chandler>
2007:
During the Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, the largest anti-
government protests in 20 years took place in Yangon.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron_Revolution>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
rainbows and unicorns:
(idiomatic) A wonderful (but often unrealistic) scenario.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rainbows_and_unicorns>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that
feel.
--Horace Walpole
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Horace_Walpole>