# With the long-awaited inaugural "live wire" test successful, Sound Transit will continue tests on the Lake Washington bridge for another 10 to 12 weeks, followed by several months of running empty trains. Monday's test was a crucial milestone to stay on track for a full 2 Line grand opening next spring.
  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.spaceEnglish
    3·
    28 days ago

    By “floating bridge”, they mean something like a very large pontoon bridge? I imagine that vertical movement with tides would be a challenge, especially when dealing with railway tracks. (I’d expect that driving onto or off the movable bridge via a ramp would be slow, much like driving onto a train ferry, though maybe they’ve managed to make it more manageable.)

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      28 days ago

      So Seattle has a unique problem: Lake Washington sits in the middle of its metropolitan area. Other cities have bodies of water in such places, hell a train once went from the mainland to key west, but lake Washington is really really bad for bridges and for underwater tunnels. It’s really fucking deep and it’s very deep from the bottom to the bedrock. It’s also too big to just suspend a bridge over it. This means that floating bridges are particularly valuable in seattle

      Here’s a video about floating bridges that a content creator I like made recently