A work of art (... or art that works)

The tunnel is more than just another pretty facility. It's designed to move thousands of people through the city each rush hour. It's an environmentally sound space too. Hybrid diesel-electric buses run quietly and cleanly through the tunnel. By converting energy normally wasted in braking into electricity and using it to help accelerate the bus, the hybrid technology cuts emissions by 90 percent, with no diesel exhaust odor.

Artist Vicki Scuri added her mark to the functional walls of both the Pine Street and Third Avenue portions of the tunnel. She designed the bright yellow and red reflective signs lining the walls. Each sign shows the number of the fire zone your bus is passing through, the distances from the last station and to the next one, and the name of the cross streets you're passing under.

You may click on most photos to see a larger image.

Scuri is also responsible for the series of reflectors at headlight level along tunnel walls. The blue, white and yellow reflectors give the illusion of a solid band of color as you speed through the tunnel.

Scratching the surface

While tunnel and station construction was winding down, Metro reworked the streets and sidewalks above the tunnel. Architect Dennis Haskell worked with artists Jack Mackie and Kate Ericson to create a surface improvement program. It included new paving, five species of trees with artist-designed grates, passenger shelters, station entrance markers, lighting, and a couple of street clocks that do more than just give you the time of day.

Artist Christian French developed a pictogram program called "Stellar Connections" [ Sound Transit .PDF 1.1 mb] for light rail stations, including the four downtown tunnel stations to be served by Link. Points of interest surrounding each station were connected to create a constellation, illustrated by Karen Lewis. The pictograms for the tunnel stations are a tiara for Westlake, spectacles for University Street, a frigate for Pioneer Square and a dragon for International District/Chinatown. The constellations are incorporated into station signs, printed materials and maps to serve as graphical markers identifying each station. They're especially helpful to international visitors who don't read or write with the Roman alphabet.

And speaking of "scratching the surface," as part of its tunnel retrofit work, Sound Transit added features to help visually impaired passengers and others traveling from station entrances to station platforms. Conceived by artist Norie Sato, a sandblasted braid in the existing marble provides a textured path from the most accessible station entrance to the future ticket vending machines and then to the station platform. And a yellow, textured safety strip of tiles was added along platform curbs to help customers detect the platform edge and stay a safe distance away from moving vehicles.

Traveling stories

At the surface entrances to all the stations, you'll find artwork that's a step ahead of all the others-"Traveling Stories." On each of the stairways leading to the street is a quotation people can read while leaving the station. The quotations are by people connected in some way with Seattle or the region. The quotations also relate to the theme of each station.

A common thread throughout "Traveling Stories" is the idea of movement and travel. And the artwork includes a color-code system you can use to help you know the direction you're headed when you leave each station. All stairs leading north out of the system are made of white granite. South steps are black granite. East steps are green granite. And west steps are red granite.

At the top of 15 stairways in the system is an entrance marker in the sidewalk. The marker includes all four granite colors forming a minicompass. And in the middle of the marker is a granite silhouette of the person whose quotation is on the stair risers. The color of the silhouette is the same as the color of the last set of risers at that entrance.

None of the silhouettes or quotations includes the name of the silhouetted or quoted person. That was the artist's way of making the quotations "transcend time." That is, as you read the quotations today, you can put them into a current context rather than the context in which they were originally said or written. You might guess who the speaker is, or you can identify the speaker by reading this guide.

Also, the type style for each quotation stems from a different time. Quotations are set in the type style invented during the time the quotations were made. Garamond type is used for quotations from the early 1800s, Bookman for quotations from the late 1800s and early 1900s, Futura for quotations from 1942-62, and Univers for quotations from 1963 to the present.