Sound Transit has come up with a unique way to aid a Capitol Hill business in a bit of a pinch due to construction on Capitol Hill Station. Eat at Broadway’s Annapurna Cafe between now and March and you’ll have a chance to win a one-of-a-kind, three-mile walk *under* Capitol Hill from downtown to Montlake. Here are the details from Sound Transit:

When you eat at Annapurna Café, 1833 Broadway, you can enter to win a Sound Transit walking tour of the U-Link tunnel-from Capitol Hill to the University of Washington. To be eligible, you must spend at least $10 at the Annapurna Café and fill out an entry form at the restaurant. You can enter every time you visit. You must be at least 18 and able to walk the entire 3-mile concrete-lined tunnel. A drawing in early March will determine the winners. No entry form information will be sold to an outside party. By 2016 only U-Link trains will be running in the tunnel, no pedestrians allowed.

Earlier, CHS reported on the impact from construction work slated to last through summer to create a pedestrian concourse beneath Broadway to provide a passage for some of the thousands of riders expected to use the light rail station when it begins service in early 2016. Now 11 years old, Annapurna is soldiering through the remaining two years of construction and continuing to offer its delights of India, Nepal and Tibet on Broadway. Neighbor King’s Teriyaki shuttered last summer and Peet’s Coffee pulled up stakes long before that. “Our focus has been on promoting and marketing Broadway through a $610K agreement with the Chamber to keep shoppers, diners and drinkers in the neighborhood,” a Sound Transit spokesperson told CHS via email about the agency’s efforts to support area businesses through the years of construction to create the Capitol Hill portion of the U-Link extension.

Sound Transit is an occasional CHS advertiser and advertises its mitigation efforts on CHS.

The three-mile walk will likely take the eventual winner a few hours to complete as the course through one of the line’s twin tunnels winds its way from the downtown transit tunnel beneath the Paramount up through Capitol Hill and then down through Montlake and under the Cut to Husky Stadium. Riders will soon travel the same route in under 10 minutes. The tunnel boring on the $1.9 billion project was completed in spring 2012 and was achieved by a team of two 21-foot-tall boring machines that completed their mission with almost no hiccups along the way barring an occasional burst of muck at the surface and some strange vibrations around the Hill and in Montlake.



The twin tunnels between downtown and Montlake pass beneath dozens of apartment buildings, about 250 homes and several municipal structures at depths between 15 feet (beneath the Montlake cut) and 300 feet (beneath Volunteer Park) below the surface. The deepest digging between Broadway and downtown bottoms out at a still impressive 150 feet below the pavement. The journey from downtown to Capitol Hill includes some of the most technically challenging work of the project. Navigating a continuous curve that at one point brought the process within 21 feet of I-5 at the surface, the tunnel boring machine operated by a team of around 17 people operating five days a week, 24 hours per day for weeks at a time, traveled from Broadway to the edge of downtown’s transit tunnel. At its fastest rate, the machine was able to churn through 105 feet of soil in a day. On the other end of things, the lucky winner will descend a steep slope down the northside of the Hill into Montlake and under the waters of the Montlake Cut. It was an incredible feat of engineering — geek out here in this document (PDF) from the project team if you want to lear more — and all the more amazing given the continued troubles faced by the efforts to bore the waterfront tunnel.

The Annapurna contest has no limit on entries — you can add your name on each visit to the restaurant, according to Sound Transit. Just make sure you can still walk, come March.