by Station Aficionado
The new station in Grand Rapids will open on Monday Oct. 27:
***********************And the State of Washington has come out with a new design for the Tacoma station that will be constructed at Freighthouse Square:
The station, named for [a] former West Michigan congressman, is slated to depart its first train of passengers to Chicago at 7:40 a.m. Monday, Oct. 27, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation. A grand opening ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. that day and is open to the public.
*************************
The Vernon J. Ehlers Amtrak Station is located at 440 Century Ave. SW, adjacent to The Rapid's Central Station. Officials tout the convenience of the two being close together for passengers looking to get around the city by bus, including Silver Line.
***************************
Tacoma’s new Amtrak station design Tuesday night passed near-final muster from an advisory committee that 10 months ago had loudly rejected a prior preliminary design.I like this design, especially the ability to make the station "open air" when the weather permits. The design seems quite in keeping with the rest of the Freighthouse Square structure. The new station is necessitated by the upcoming reroute of Amtrak trains away from Point Defiance.
***********************
The new drawings showed a glass-walled, 180-foot-long station equipped with transparent garage-door-like walls that can be raised in fair weather to create a station open to the outside on both its street and track sides. The proposed station would be built in the middle of the 1,000-foot-long Freighthouse Square building at East 25th and D streets near the Tacoma Dome.
The design will include a clock tower structure that will be a visual landmark for the station and ultimately could serve as a support and an elevator shaft for a pedestrian bridge between the existing Sound Transit garage, the new station and the new south platform at the station.
The state’s plan doesn’t include funding for the pedestrian bridge, and the tower may not be included in the project if the Federal Railway Administration (FRA) objects. David Smelser, WSDOT’s project manager for the station, however, pledged to lobby for inclusion of the tower in the design that the FRA approves.
***************************************
The state plans to submit the basic design to the FRA at the end of November. If the federal agency approves that and a subsequent final design, construction of the station is expected to begin in late 2015 or early 2016 with the station opening in 2017 when trains begin using the new route.