TheWashCycle

Budget Issues could create indefinite delay in Capital Crescent Trail Tunnel

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich released his proposed capital budget last week and much to the chagrin of trail advocates, it includes no money for the county's portion of the Capital Crescent Trail (CCT). Montgomery County Council member Andrew Friedson (D-District 1) decried the lack of funding for a tunnel on the CCT. Hans Riemer opposed it too.

Transportation officials have released draft designs for the project, which would run underneath Wisconsin Avenue and link the trail with downtown Bethesda.

Riemer called the tunnel a “huge project” related to the success of the Purple Line. Advocates say it would provide a direct route to the Bethesda station for pedestrians and cyclists, who would otherwise be forced to cross a busy arterial road.

As I understand it, this does not mean there will no tunnel, nor does it mean there will no spending on the tunnel. It's a proposed budget and even if Council agrees to it, they aren't saying they will never build it, but any delay means the tunnel won't be available when the new tunnel opens. Nonetheless, this is an unwelcome turn of events. 

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has included no money in his capital budget proposal for the county’s long-promised plan to build a tunnel to carry cyclists and runners on the Capital Crescent Trail beneath busy Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Bethesda.

County officials say the project’s construction costs have ballooned, making it too expensive to include in a tight budget.

When the CCT first opened, the trail ended where it does now in Bethesda because the Air Rights Tunnel was off limits. It took a couple of years and some active advocacy to open in 1998. It had always been the plan to run both the Purple Line and the new CCT through the existing tunnel, but in 2011 the county performed an engineering review that showed that it would be too costly and they made plans to drop the trail tunnel. Because the tunnel would have to be drastically modified to make room for both the tunnel and the trail, adding the trail through the tunnel would cost about $50 million. 

It was determined that knocking down the Apex building above the tunnel and building a new building and tunnel would be a better solution and so, after lengthy negotiations, that's what they did.  The new Apex Building will include a tunnel and station for the Purple Line and another tunnel and bike room for the trail. 

In order to avoid the problems with the tunnel beneath the Air Rights Building, the trail tunnel was to be redirected, as can be seen above, underneath Wisconsin Avenue and the buildings that stand along Elm Street to the east of Wisconsin. That's the part the county is supposed to build and is that Elrich is not budgeting money for. 

A little over 2 years ago, the estimated cost of the County-portion of the tunnel was $15 million to $30 million and that was still the number they were pointing to a few months later when they came out with three preliminary design options.

But they now report that the cost has continued to rise.

County spokesman Neil Greenberger said funding for the tunnel was not included in the capital improvement plan Elrich announced this week.

“The scope of the project changed as it was further studied,” said Greenberger. “It needed to be a longer tunnel than originally believed, and that boosted the cost significantly.”

Greenberger said funding for the project “could be added in the future, and we will continue to study alternative ways to build it at a more reasonable cost.”

Without funding, progress on the tunnel would be delayed, disappointing bicycle advocates who say the feature has been promised for years.

Now, ironically, they're back at the $50 million price tag that started this whole Apex building drama.

But county officials say early design work put the projected construction cost at more than $50 million — far more than the $25 million initially anticipated — in part because the tunnel would have to be longer than expected because of the constraints of surrounding streets.

“We were not prepared for all these costs when the project was discussed,” said county spokesman Neil Greenberger. “There’s no money in this [capital budget], but we’re aware of it and aware of its importance to the community. We can do it later.”

Montgomery County Council member Hans Riemer (D-At Large) said he will try to put the money in the budget but would need to find other projects to cut.

Requiring trail users to cross Wisconsin at a light, Riemer said, “is sort of like putting a stoplight on the Beltway. We just don’t want to create that kind of disruption if we can avoid it.”

I don't know how to look at that as anything other than a complete screw-up. They misjudged the length of the tunnel by 100%, and they went down a path that involved delaying the project and knocking down a building to wind up right where they were before - needing $50 million to keep the trail beneath Wisconsin Avenue (admittedly, the Apex Building rebuild had other advantages). How did they make such egregious miscalculations?

But I'm also a bit skeptical. Did they really misjudge the length of the tunnel they'd need? In this drawing from 2013 it looks pretty much the same (although it is cut off). 

Oddly enough, if they'd just gone with the "no-trail" option from the beginning, at least there would be pedestrian path for the CCT.

If you want to learn more, MCDOT is having a meeting on the trail tonight at 7pm at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School all purpose room/cafeteria. Maybe they'll explain how this happened. 

The Montgomery County Department of Transportation will present the Capital Crescent Trail Tunnel project and obtain feedback. For those who cannot attend but want to watch the meeting, there will be a live webcast at this address: https://montgomerycounty.adobeconnect.com/capitalcrescenttrail

Montgomery County has developed three designs for the Capital Crescent Trail tunnel

In late March, it was revealed that the Montgomery County Department of Transportation is working on three designs for the county portion of the new Capital Crescent Trail tunnel in Bethesda. 

The old Air Rights Tunnel was closed last year, and the new tunnel there will only have the Purple Line in it. So the county is building port of a new trail tunnel that will connect to a part beneath the Carr Properties project on the site of the Apex Building. 

Tunnel beneath the Apex Building

The department plans to present its recommendations on the project to the council in about a year and a half. The county has budgeted $3.8 million to design the tunnel and estimates the project would cost $15 million to $25 million to construct.

Orlin told the council the design should be finished in time for the council next year to set aside the construction funds that would allow the tunnel to be built by the scheduled opening of the 16.2-mile line in 2022.

Option 1 has a tunnel that emerges on Elm Street, where there's currently parking,  and then connects to the Willow Lane cycletrack to the west of 47th. It has the shortest tunnel, and the lowest price, but requires taking a lot of road space. It also has the most direct connections. 

Option 2 has a longer tunnel coming up in Elm Street Park and then splitting to go to the trail or turn back south to the WIllow Lane Cycle track. 

Option 3 has a tunnel that goes farther down Elm Street and under the portion that is bike/ped only before coming up on the far side of Elm Street Park. It doesn't appear to connect to the cycle track.

Right now, I like option 1 the best. It makes for direct connections and will involve less biking in the tunnel. 

Jerusalem opens a bike path in a sewage tunnel

Check out this new 2.1km bicycle tunnel in Jerusalem. The tunnel was built for a sewage pipe with a one-lane road next to it for the water company to use to maintain the pipe. But they've recently modified it to now have a two way bike path.

he tunnel is three meters wide, and although it contains a large sewage pipe, it is well ventilated and there is no bad smell. Air-quality monitoring has shown that there is no exceptional pollution in the tunnel.

The path is being opened for a bike race, then closed for safety inspections and reopened in a few months. (Video) This is some great adaptive re-use - or adaptive better use or something.... It's awesome regardless of what you call it. 

Two years ago, Eyal Haimovsky, CEO of the Jerusalem Development Authority decided to pave a track through the tunnel, above the water passage, and add it to the Jerusalem circular biking trail, a 42-kilometer-long route that passes through several parks and nature reserves around the capital

It's a little close to this April Fool's Day post from 5 years ago.

The great tunnel trails

This is the last post in my tunnel series. You can read the other posts here and here. 

The Othello Tunnels on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail

There are a lot of trails with one or two tunnels on them, even a few with more. But there are few trails with a lot of tunnels and some others that could have a s---ton of tunnels (trying to keep this family friendly, but as a women I used to work with would say "a s---ton is a great term of measurement. Everyone knows that all you ever need is one s----ton. No one ever says we had two s---tons of something."

The North Bend Rail Trail in West Virginia has 10 tunnels, including a few of the longer ones in the country, and so does the Route of the Hiawatha Trail in Idaho, including the 2nd longest bike tunnel in the world. The Milwaukee Road Rail Trail, also in Idaho has 9 - and it connects to the Route of the Hiawatha, because both were built on the old Milwaukee Road. The John Wayne Pioneer Trail (aka The Iron Horse Trail) in Washington has 8 tunnels and is also on the old Milwaukee Road. Of course, these are all topped by the Kettle Valley Rail Trail just over the border in British Columbia, Canada - it has 12 tunnels (though if pride is on the line, they're pretty short and there are fewer feet of tunnel on the Kettle than on the North Bend, John Wayne or Route of the Hiawatha). And that's it for trails with 5 tunnels or more. 

There are a few - very few - opportunities for such trails.

There's the Fairmont Branch in West Virginia, which was mentioned in the previous post in this series.

A much more difficult lift, with many more tunnels, are the old tunnels in KY and TN on the CN&TP. This line was called the "Rathole" because of it's 27 tunnels and ran from Danville, KY and Oakdale, TN.  The primary difficulty here is that while the tunnels were abandoned, the rail line wasn't meaning a trail would need to run adjacent to the rail where the sections weren't bypassed. 5 tunnels are right next to the existing railroad and likely unusable. Furthermore, 5 of the tunnels were daylighted and 1 had a stream rerouted through it. But the other tunnels could be used by a series of trails of varying utility. Tunnels 7-9 are already part of the Cathy Crockett Trail in Kentucky and that trail could be extended to include tunnel 5. The other tunnels are on one of 7 bypassed sections, but none of those sections would use more than 3 tunnels.

Another multi-tunnel rail line is actually in the process of being made into the trail. The Rock Island Trail will stretch over 200 miles across the state of Missouri and include 4 tunnels with a total length of over 4000 feet. 

Some of the trails mentioned above could have other tunnels added. The North Bend Trail passes by two bypassed tunnels that could be added - at least as hiking detours. The Kettle Valley has more tunnels than are on the trail - but I'm not sure how many as the documentation on it is lacking. It seems Canadian rail fans aren't as rabid as American ones.

But the big opportunity is the Milwaukee road. Much of the western end of the Pacific Extension, a line from Minneapolis to Seattle, was abandoned in 1980 and parts of that have been transformed into six rail trails in Idaho, Montana and Washington using 28 tunnels. The abandoned section starts in Terry, Montana and is abandoned almost the whole way to Renton, WA, but for a small section near St. Maries, ID - a section that can be bypassed using another rail trail. Altogether it's about 1100 miles. A trail along the whole right of way, connecting all the existing trails, would pass through 46 tunnels. It would be by far the longest rail trail in the world, with the most tunnels, pass through some amazing country and provide access to dozens of cities and towns including Seattle and Butte - and that's without counting all the spurs. Maybe someday.

The longest bike/ped tunnels in the country

One of the cooler things you can do on a bike is ride through an abandoned and converted railroad tunnel, and in DC we're pretty lucky when it comes to that. We have a few good ones in the immediate area, like the Dalecarlia and the Air Rights tunnels on the Capital Crescent Trail and the Wilkes Street Tunnel in Alexandria and some of the country's longest ones within driving distance.  In fact two of the 10 longest ones in the world (more on that in a minute) are not far away in Pennsylvania. They're old turnpike tunnels that started out as railroad tunnels even though trains never went through them. In addition the longest bike/ped tunnel in Virginia is in the DC area, but it's not a railroad tunnel. 

Most of the longer tunnels for walking and biking are old railroad tunnels, but there are lots of shorter tunnels - we might think of them more as underpasses - that are used to help create a grade separated path for cyclists and pedestrians to get underneath roads or railroads. I've spent a significant amount of time making as complete a list of bike/ped tunnels (excluding those that can also be driven through - sorry Zoo tunnel) as I could, and I think its perhaps the most complete list anywhere. It is not, however, complete. There are likely hundreds of short underpasses that I didn't include, simply because the task of finding them is overwhelming. But I got all the tunnels I could find. Rails to Trails has a report on many of these tunnels, which while incomplete and hampered by errors, was the best existing list and was immensely useful. 

There are some issues with my list. First is in deciding what is and isn't a tunnel you can bike through. The Slavošovský tunel in Slovakia is the 3rd longest in the wold. You can definitely ride a bike through it - because I've seen video of people doing that, but on one end you have to carry your bike out of a 20-30 feet deep hole to keep going. Not exactly a commuter route. Another problem is with getting accurate measurements of the lengths. In some cases I could find reliable measurements (from an engineering survey for example) but in others it's just a reported number (sometimes one of many and usually at a nice round number like 200 feet). So if you're hoping for final rulings on the relative position of tunnels of similar length, you're probably out of luck. Third is that I likely missed some tunnels, especially overseas. Known unknowns. 

Having said all that, below is a list of the 10 longest bike/ped tunnels in the United States (for the international list, go here). 

1. Snoqualmie MR#50 (11894 ft)    King and Kittitas Counties, WA  John Wayne Pioneer Trail
2. St. Paul Pass MR#20 (8976 ft)   Montana and Idaho                    Route of the Hiawatha   
3. Sideling Hill (6782 ft)                  Breezewood, PA                         Pike to Bike Trail
4. Norwalk (3810 ft)                        Sparta, WI                                  Elroy Sparta State Trail
5. Rays Hill  (3532 ft)                     Bedford & Fulton Counties, PA   Pike to Bike Trail
6. Kennerdale (3350 ft)                  Kennerdale, PA                           Allegheny River Trail
7. Big Savage  ( 3295 ft)                Somerset County, PA                  Great Allegheny Passage
8. Paw Paw (3118 ft)                     Old Town, MD                              C&O Canal 
9. Rockland (2868 ft)                      Rockland, PA                              Allegheny River Trail
10. Burro Schmidt (2640 ft)             Kern County, CA                          Burro Schmidt Tunnel Trail 

Of these, 9 started as railroad tunnels and one as a canal tunnel. Two of the railroad tunnels were converted to highway tunnels making them rails-to-highway-to-trails.  The Burro Schmidt tunnel is a pedestrian-only tunnel.  So 6 out of 10 of these are in the mid-Atlantic area.

But what about the longest tunnels in the closest 5 states to DC (MD, VA, PA, WV and DE)? Well, Delaware doesn't have any bike/ped tunnels (yet) - in fact I don't think there's a single tunnel in Delaware at all.  In addition to the 6 above, the next four are all in West Virginia, with three of them being on the same trail:

7. Central Station Tunnel (NBRT #6) (2297 ft)  Central Station, WV    North Bend Rail Trail
8. Eaton Tunnel (NBRT #21) (1840 ft)               Eaton, WV                  North Bend Rail Trail
9. Knobley Tunnel (1448 ft)                               Carpendale, WV         Carpendale Trail
10. Silver Run Tunnel (NBRT #19) (1376 ft)     Ritchie County, WV     North Bend Rail Trail

Finally, here's the list of the longest tunnel by state. Note that, like Delaware, not every state has a bike/ped tunnel. The number refers to it's rank among all bike/ped tunnels. Also, even though the St. Paul Pass Tunnel crosses from Montana to Idaho, I counted it as neither's longest. 

31 Moss Creek Tunnel MR#22 (1516 ft)    Roland, ID                        Route of the Hiawatha

32 Cartwrigth Tunnel (1458 ft)                   McKenzie County, ND      FB&CT Trail

34 Chetoogeta mountain tunnel (1447 ft)  Tunnel Hill, GA                 Chetoogeta mountain tunnel trail

40 CNTP Tunnel #9 (1290 ft)                     Alpine, KY                        Cathy Crockett Trail

45 Tunnel On Lakewood Drive (1200 ft)    Swain County, NC            Lakeshore Tunnel Trail

47 Little Tunnel (1193 ft)                             Cumberland Gap, TN      Little Tunnel Trail

89 Clarity Tunnel (630 ft)                            Caprock Canyons, TX     Caprock Canyon Trailway

92 Seaboard Airline Tunnel  (600 ft)           Columbia, SC

101 The Tunnel at Tunnel Hill (543 ft)         Tunnel Hill, IL                   Tunnel Hill Drive

102 Pentagon Tunnel (536 ft)                      Arlington, VA

105 National Road Tunnel (522 ft)               St. Clairsville, OH           National Road Bikeway

116 Dominion Tunnel MR#19 (474 ft)          Saltese, MT                     Route of the Olympian

124 Tunnel Through Ely's Peak (450 ft)      St. Louis County, MN       DWP Trail

126 Oswego Tunnel (429 ft)                        Oswego, NY                     Harbor Rail Trail

137 HRT Tunnel #3 (383 ft)                         Boulder City, NV               Historic Railroad Trail

141 Tunnel Drive #3 (376 ft)                        Canon, CO                       Tunnel Drive Trail

142 Mosier Twin Tunnels (369 ft)                Mosier, OR                        Columbia River Highway Trail

165 Portland River Trail Tunnel (277 ft)       Portland, MI                      Portland River Trail

167 Tunnel A (270 ft)                                   Fall Draw, SD                    George S. Mickelson Trail

174 Foundry Branch Tunnel (252 ft)            Washington, DC               Capital Crescent Trail

177 Rocheport Tunnel (243 ft)                     Rocheport, MO                 Katy Trail 

179 Shepaug Tunnel (235 ft)                       Roxbury, CT                      Steep Rock  Trail

225 Saddle Rock Tunnel (76 feet)               Scotts Bluff National Monument, NE     Saddle Rock Trail

228 Phipps Tunnel (70 feet)                        Holliston, MA                      Upper Charles Rail Trail 

239 Lafayette Street Pedestrian Tunnel (55 feet) Tallahassee, FL

Most of these are old railroad tunnels, but a few are not. The tunnel on Lakewood Drive in North Carolina is an old road tunnel as is the Mosier Twin Tunnels in Oregon. The Pentagon tunnel was, of course, built specifically for pedestrian traffic as were the Portland River Trail Tunnel in Michigan and the Lafayette Street Pedestrian Tunnel in Florida. The Foundry Branch Tunnel in DC was originally a stream/sewer culvert, then a road tunnel.  Finally, the Saddle Rock Tunnel, which is on a hiking trail, was a test tunnel for a road.

Also of note, the Shepaug and Chetoogeta mountain tunnel are pedestrian only, with the latter being part of a museum. You have to pay to walk through it and then all you can do is hike to the end and then hike back. 

By the way, the Pentagon Tunnel is the 2nd longest specially built bike/pedestrian tunnel in the world, behind only the 1330 foot Mount Baker Ridge Tunnel in Seattle, Washington. 

Finally, here's the information for the tunnels in the immediate area. Again the first number is their rank in the world. 

68 Air Rights Tunnel (800 feet)                               Bethesda, MD         Georgetown Branch Trail 

102 Pentagon Tunnel (536 feet)                              Arlington, VA 

143 Wilkes Street Tunnel (360 feet)                        Alexandria, VA 

149 Dalecarlia Tunnel (340 feet)                             Brookmont, MD      Capital Crescent Trail 

155 Holmes run Trail Tunnel (300 feet)                   Alexandria, VA        Holmes Run Trail 

172 Foundry Branch Tunnel (252 ft)                        Washington, DC      Capital Crescent Trail

173 Telegraph Road Tunnel (250 feet)                     Alexandria, VA 

186 193 Tunnel (201 feet)                                      Glenn Dale, MD      WB&A Trail

193 Duke Street Tunnel (163 feet)                          Alexandria, VA

205 Crystal City Connector Tunnel (117 feet)           Arlington, VA          Mount Vernon Trail

208 Race Track Road Tunnel (108 feet)                   Bowie, MD              WB&A Trail 

229 Old Waugh Chappel Road Tunnel (65 feet)        Odenton, MD          WB&A Trail

232 Maryland Avenue Tunnel (64 feet)                     Rockville, MD        New Mark Path

240 Center Leg Freeway Pedestrian Tunnel (49ft)     Washington, DC    

(Update: Since originally publishing this, readers have pointed out other tunnels - including two in DC that I missed - and this has been updated accordingly.)

DC Water tunnels to serve as bike routes

This post was an April Fool's Day post

DC Water is busy building miles of new tunnels underneath of DC to transport water and waste, and now under a new DDOT initiative it will also transport cyclists. 

DC Water is building a series of tunnels throughout the city to move and store stormwater and sewage without dumping it into the Anacostia, the Potomac or Rock Creek. One tunnel will go from Blue Plains to Yards Park and then to RFK Stadium and the Arboretum before turning west to Rhode Island Avenue and following it down past Florida Avenue. Another tunnel will go north from Rhode Island Avenue up 1st Street NE. But the new tunnels will only be used 2% of the time. "The rest of the time, they're just sitting there empty" says DC Water's George Hawkins.

"We don't see empty infrastructure," said DDOT's Terry Bellamy, "we see opportunity."

DDOT is planning to add access points along the tunnels where cyclists can enter and exit the 13 mile long system to travel across the city without having to deal with car traffic or stop lights. Automatic gates would close whenever the tunnels are in use or a storm is expected. 

"New York has done wonderful things with the High Line and we think this could be similar...except that it would be underground." said former Planning Director Harriet Tregoning, "And stealing another page from New York City, there would also be human feces everywhere."

The tunnels would be lit using a methane captured from the tunnels themselves, so the whole thing would be powered by renewable energy.

"We appreciate DDOT's willingness to think outside the box," said WABA's Greg Billing, "But this...wow...I don't know. I'll just say that, in addition to helmets, we recommend fenders."

"We have a critical parking problem now and they're dedicating possible parking spaces to bikes," says John Townsend of AAA, who sees this as a giveaway to cyclists when on-street parking is extremely limited. "This is just another sign of the war on cars."