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Seattle Bus Tunnel



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Video Info

Author: citytransportinfo
Description: Buses operating in dedicated transit tunnels are very rare. One city where this is done is Seattle, Washington State, USA. Originally opening in September 1990, and wholly located within the city's 'free travel' zone the 1 & 1/3rd mile (2.1km) tunnels were originally served by a fleet of Italian Breda duobuses, with some services providing a direct link to the city's airport. It is in this guise that this film was made. The bus subway features 5 stations which opened on Mondays - Saturdays only. At the time of construction rail tracks were also installed for a future light rail service. Unfortunately despite this commendable forward thinking it was subsequently decided that part of the light rail line will follow a different alignment than the existing tunnels, so on 24th September 2005 the bus subway was closed for two year period of rebuilding. Most of the duobuses were actually withdrawn well in advance of the closure (with many being converted to pure trolleybuses for use on surface routes) and - amazingly - replaced with diseasal powered buses. (diseasal = disease diesel) In April 2005 local users were reporting on Internet discussion groups that the tunnels were often somewhat smelly from (what thinking people know to be) the poisonous diesel engine exhaust fumes. Whilst it is true that the buses are diesel electric hybrids they still needed to use the fossil fuel traction package whilst underground, although this was in a special 'hush' mode which means that the only operate between stations and at much reduced power. Apparently the choice of fossil fuel buses was influenced by the transport operators' belief that it is not possible to mix overhead wire powered light rail and electric trolleybuses / duo-buses in an underground tunnel system - even though Essen proved otherwise! In Seattle the buses were driver steered, it might be assumed that for safety's sake "some" sort of guidance system would have been needed - if only to reduce the chance of a bus accidentally hitting the tunnel wall - especially within the portion of the bus subway which featured narrow London Underground 'tube-like' tunnels (as seen here), but this was not the situation. This video compilation was filmed in May 1993. The sequences only follow a cursory order and because of faulty camcorder lens optics (which was only discovered once back home) the images are not as sharp as they should have been. Which is a shame. ------------------------------ The tunnel reopened on 24th September 2007, although again for hybrid diseasal buses only.
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Comments


@ephemeralprotagonist what a great idea. buses are cheaper and arent limited to tracks. probably cheaper to maintain as well

Wow looks like they got cheap and didnt buy subways instead

wow wat a waste of 54 seconds of my life

why r there train tracks in that tunnel?

@citytransportinfo or solar, or wind

I miss those buses...just not the same with these buses today without the having to bring up/down the cables to switch from diesel to electric. Ah nostalgia...

Being in that hole must sure be fun during an earthquake!

>Unfortunately despite this commendable forward thinking it was subsequently decided that part of the light rail line will follow a different alignment than the existing tunnels This was done so that they do not disturb MICROSOFT... The engineers say that they had all their decisions approved by bill gates.. actually they sent blank plans to bill and he designed it all

Looks like you're traveling inside an Endoscope .

@animal16365 I wish you really knew all that was going on with new diesel for class 8 trucks. Yes it has a filter. We have to BUY additive to make the filter work. Once the filter is clogged, it is a hazmat piece and has to be disposed. The fuel mileage is down so CO2 production is up. Cost per mile to operate is higher. So for less emissions we created a hazmat disposal issue and more CO2. Real smart and adds cost for everything shipped to reduce NO2.

Beautiful Trip! Excellent!

I didn't know they had that here, cool.

@citytransportinfo no pollution but there is an environmental impact wind and solar=no pollution AND no environmental impact

these buses stopped using the tunnel in 2008 when metro bought the new, New Flyer diesel electric hybrid, which uses diesel on the street and electic in the tunnel its pretty cool

@ephemeralprotagonist we've got bus tunnels, but the light rail kind of failed... i think it missed it's ridership target by like 1,000% :P

Yea washington is beast especially Seattle

It not the bus,it is a The trolleybus

yeah we got those here in estonia, tho we dont have tunnels hehe.. just the rails..

@citytransportinfo take some time to figure out whats happening with the colorado river and tell me its free

Very interesting.

@Shelbytown123 Says who? What about the GM EV1. Your just jealous that Seattle is more green and better at recycling than your city. And has a school like Nova and a place like The Vera Project. Don't talk shit about my beautiful city. Seattle is a great name for a city. NYC smells like ass everywhere. EW

I was trapped in the tunnel when they locked it up one night ?

In Kiev the tram go into forrest

Oo.. I thought it was a train tunnel lol

@animal16365 @animal16365 This is not true. The smallest class of particulates are still released and they contribute nearly the entire health burden.The filters are not effective. More important is how the diesel is run, but there is still no way to burn hydrocarbon in a diesel without harmful pollution. The Diesel Cycle could only burn reasonably cleanly on hydrogen.

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