Spokane Digs a Street Beneath Its Streets
The Spokane Inland Railway breaks ground on a four-thousand-foot concrete tunnel under Front Avenue, with two underground stations and a three-year timeline.
Ground was broken Saturday on the preliminary work for a $2,000,000 tunnel of the Spokane Inland Railway, a bore 4,000 feet long, its ceiling to be from five to ten feet below the surface of Front Avenue, a main street of the business section in Spokane. Its completion is expected three years hence. The tunnel will be lined with concrete and double-tracked. Two underground stations, where the excavation will be the full width of the street, are part of the project.
“Two underground stations, where the excavation will be the full width of the street, are part of the project.”
In 1909 Spokane was still spending like a metropolis, and burying a double-tracked railway under its busiest street — with underground stations, no less — was the kind of civic bet a boom town makes. The project is a reminder that the region's transit megaprojects, cost overruns and downtown-construction headaches are more than a century old. Front Avenue is still there; the tunnel is another story.
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