The buildings on the Roosevelt Light Rail Station construction site are no more, and it’s time to talk next steps with the neighborhood.
Sound Transit is holding a construction update open house tonight, Tuesday, January 29, in the Roosevelt High School Library (1410 NE 66th St) from 6-8 PM (presentation begins at 6:30 PM).
From the Northgate Link Extension update (via email):
Sound Transit is hosting an open house on Jan. 29 to discuss details of:
- Utility work planned in 2013 and early 2014
- Update on other construction work
- Promoting the local business district
Seattle City Light staff will also be on hand to answer questions about upcoming power line and pole work.
You can find more information about the Roosevelt Station here.
We will be at tonight’s meeting, and will be reporting on it LIVE right here.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Unfortunately, none of our one-and-a-half hours of presentation notes were save in the post! However, Sound Transit has emailed us a PDF of the presentation slides (click on the picture below to download).
Roosevelt Station Construction Open House presentation (click to download the 2.8 MB PDF)
When the presentation portion comes available online, we will post it here. Thanks for following along!
Question time over! Open house going on for 20 more minutes.
Call the construction hotline in the middle of the night and…a LIVE person will answer. And relay concerns to the site within 15 minutes. (That time a general rule-of-thumb.)
About 60 people in attendance, btw.
Expected frequency of truck traffic? One truck every five minutes during peak hauling. (And that truck, I believe, is hauling two loads, one by trailer.)
Nighttime noise variance appeal hearing scheduled for March 12.
Semi-permeable clothes installed under drains, which helps the water but causes clogs on top due to debris. ST keep an eye on them, to help prevent mini-lakes.
Cleaner Diesel engines? Oaks? Contractor required to meet state and local requirements. Scarlet oaks to come down later this year.
Question about why trucks are using neighborhood streets (12th) and not 65th. Endlich: SDOT makes the call and requested this route.
Looking at truck routes now, to and from the Roosevelt Station site. I-5 is close, thankfully. Trucks will be covered.
Boring machine from Maple Leaf Portal will be extracted from the Roosevelt Station and relaunched to dig the second tunnel. Muck for both will be trucked out of the Portal location.
Electrical outages: They try to do commercial outages at night and residential during the day.
Water service interruption? SPU staff: New lines built first. Less than half a day interruption, for 1-2 hours in the daytime. Affected customers will be notified.
Question time now. When will construction wall go up/down? End of this summer, dependent on contractor. Down as station is finished.
Next steps: Marketing plan for the business district, and 90% station design open house in 2014.
On-site staff member to be contacted through the community outreach folks after a call has come in over the construction hotline.
Reducing impacts to neighbors: Communicate oncoming events, apply lessons from earlier projects, maintain an attractive construction wall, promote the local business district, 24-hour construction hotline (888-298-2395), ST seeking construction parking near site, off-street. And a staff member is on-site at all times.
Five minute idle limits on trucks.
Further update (in response to feedback and other project experience): Now, no nighttime hauling of muck from tunneling, and no secant pile wall construction (holds the walls up as excavation occurs) past 7 PM. Both unless approved by ST.
Nighttime noise variance sought to shorten the time of construction of the station.
Nighttime noise variance update. City’s decision to approve the variance (in November 2012) has been appealed. ST in appeals process now, outcome not known at this time. Neighbor initiated the appeal.
LOTS of questions from the crowd about parking mitigation. For locals, and staff and students of the high school. Basically: There is none.
Street closures during excavation, tunneling and station construction from 2013-2019 will be limited to 66th and 67th between 12th and Roosevelt. Some sidewalks will be closed along 12th and Roosevelt during this period as well.
Jet grounding will also take place on 67th at 12th and occur in all lanes. Should take three months, and parking will not be available in this area during this work.
Jet grounding has to do with firming up the ground before tunneling begins.
Jet grounding to start in late 2013 and take approx three months. Traffic on 65th will be affected: Two lanes (one each way) in the current eastbound lanes as jet grounding occurs in the current westbound lanes.
Exact times for work to start are not known as of yet. However, all this utility work will be done during normal construction (daytime) hours.
Water and sewer line relocation/upgrades to happen late-2013 to mid-2014 and will take around 4 months. Traffic will be maintained on the arterials of 12th and 66th, but there will be interruptions, like with all the other relocations.
Short-term said to be one or two hours.
There is potential short-term interruption for Comcast service, electricity, and a few interruptions to CenturyLink services.
Gas line work around the constriction site is projected to only take a month, sometime between now and July. Temporary sidewalk parking, and lane closures expected.
Weedin Pl NE between 66th and 68th will have 4-6 months of utility undergrounding work ahead of it. Traffic will be maintained, but there will be temporary sidewalk, parking, or lane closures.
Representative from Seattle City Light (SCL) going over some details now.
Showing a map now of the areas to be affected by the utility work. Temporary sidewalk, parking, lane closures. Customers will be contacted by the utilities.
Gas lines will also be relocated, and unused lines will be capped.
Demo and clean-up of the Roosevelt Station site happening now. Utility work to begin soon, go through mid-2013. SCL will upgrade overhead power lines, install new poles, and relocate. Comcast and CenturyLink will also be relocating lines during this time.
Tunneling order: Roosevelt to UW Station, then Northgate Portal to Roosevelt.
Going over the timeline. Excavation should begin at the end of this year, and last four years.
Ellen Blair, ST Community Outreach giving the overview of the system. The start of every meeting. It’s like the Sound Transit Flag Salute.
Ron Endlich, Northgate Link Extension Deputy Project Manager introducing other Sound Transit staff.
A few notorious persons in attendance: A few good men from the Seattle Transit Blog, and Hugh Sisley himself.
Hello! Live in the RHS Library now and the presentation portion is about to start.
Thanks for getting those slides up!
Thank YOU so much for bringing the complete lack of notes to my attention the next morning!
I’m still planning on writing a bit of a summary, highlighting the concerns of those in attendance. I’ll put out the word when those are up (hopefully this weekend).
Looking forward to a recap of last night’s Roosevelt Station open house. Updates soon?
I live blogged the whole thing, as it happened. And now I’m not seeing that info anywhere here. ARGH.