New Stadium Way designed to support Streetcar

Stadium Way at S. 4th Street

A key roadway for potentially extending Tacoma Link out of the core of Downtown Tacoma will be undergoing a $9.5m Complete Streets-style reconstruction starting in September. After work is completed in late 2012, the roadway will support northward expansion of Tacoma Link.

Stadium Way served as a streetcar corridor before the demise of Tacoma's streetcar system in 1938.  It is currently in a state of disrepair with broken sidewalks, caving asphalt, and a decaying substructure composed of fill dirt and decomposing wooden trestle.

Stadium Way may serve as
the combined brown corridor.

The new design improves pedestrian and bicycle access and will connect with the Bayside Trail System.  Per Complete Streets requirements, the design includes bike lanes, a broad cliff-side pedestrian promenade with lookout points to view Mount Rainier and Commencement Bay, ornamental lighting and protected pedestrian crossings - in addition to a reinforced roadway with several new retaining walls.

In March, the Streetcar Stakeholders group identified three separate routing corridors that could potentially use Stadium Way, including lines to: St. Joseph Hospital via Martin Luther King Jr. Way (the Orange Line), 6th Avenue Business District (the Purple Line), and to Tacoma’s North End via ‘I’ Street (the Blue Line).

I asked the City of Tacoma engineer in charge of the project how the new roadway would be able to handle streetcars.  Here was his response (emphasis mine):

North 1st Street will be designed for future streetcar use, with a 7.5% maximum grade.

"Our value engineering consultant has recommended not to exceed a 7.5% grade. Thus we designed a 7.5% maximum grade in N 1St Street. We did not have to enlarge any designed radii. The radius of the south bound lane at N 1st and E Street is the smallest horizontal radius on the project and still satisfies the minimum allowed for the street car. A rail expert analyzed our preliminary profile design and per his recommendations we were able to limit the longer length grades to 6% or less. Reversing vertical curves preferably have 100 feet of straight grade in between, which we were able to accommodate. The vertical curvature limits for street cars of these vertical curves were not a controlling factor.

The new street will be able to withstand the weight of a street car. Actually, Sound Transit would construct new concrete slabs in which the tracks would be embedded.

The overhead street car power supply would be suspended from a system with poles on both sides of the street, for the most part. It is highly speculative where additional stations will be located, but a physically feasible location is indeed north of South 4th Street. Another option might be along E-street. I am deferring this to Sound Transit."

 -Raymond van der Roest, City of Tacoma Engineer

Learn more:

• City of Tacoma Public Works - Stadium Way Reconstruction Project
• City of Tacoma - Streetcar Stakeholder Final Report
• Engineering Schematic of Stadium Way Redesign