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Powered Link Train Crosses I-90 for First Time in Pivotal Test » The Urbanist (www.theurbanist.org)

submitted 3 months ago by scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech to c/seattle@lemmy.world

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[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.world 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 points 3 months ago

Yep, we have 3 of them now in Washington State, 2 of which are here in Seattle. Essentially giant pontoons tethered to the lake bed. Check out this video if you want to know more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lsxf0OnNwc

[–] lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 months ago

:DDDD