Washington Park is a light rail station in Portland, Oregon, United States, served by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. Situated between Sunset Transit Center and Goose Hollow/Southwest Jefferson Street station, it is the 17th and 3rd station eastbound on the Blue Line and the Red Line, respectively. The station's two tracks and island platform are part of the Robertson Tunnel beneath Portland's West Hills. Its head house and surface-level plaza occupy the middle of a parking lot surrounded by the Hoyt Arboretum, Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Oregon Zoo, and World Forestry Center. Washington Park is the only completely underground station in the MAX system. At below ground, it is the deepest transit station in North America and in the western hemisphere. It is also the seventh-deepest in the world.
The station opened in September 1998 as part of the Westside MAX extension to downtown Hillsboro. Connections include TriMet bus route 63–Washington Park/Arlington Heights and a free seasonal shuttle. Various hiking trails, some a part of Portland's 40-Mile Loop, connect the station to other parts of Washington Park, including the International Rose Test Garden and the Portland Japanese Garden.
History
Plans to build a light rail line to serve Portland's western suburbs in Washington County emerged in 1979 with a proposal from regional government Metro to extend what would become the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) from its inaugural terminus in downtown Portland farther west to the cities of Beaverton and Hillsboro. During early planning, several alternative alignments through the West Hills were determined, including routes along the Sunset Highway, Beaverton–Hillsdale Highway, and Multnomah Boulevard. A majority of jurisdictions had selected a Sunset Highway light rail alternative by June 1982, with the Portland City Council the last to adopt a resolution supporting this route in July 1983. Metro subsequently moved forward with this alternative, and the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) authorized $1.3 million in funds to begin a preliminary engineering study. Soon afterwards, TriMet suspended the project to focus on the completion of the Banfield Light Rail Project.
Planning for the westside extension resumed in January 1988. Prior to the start of preliminary engineering efforts, the Portland City Council asked TriMet to consider building a rail tunnel through the West Hills instead of following the Sunset Highway alternative's proposal to run tracks on the surface alongside Canyon Road. TriMet's engineers noted that this surface option would carry a steep six- to seven-percent grade as opposed to only two percent in a tunnel. That May, TriMet awarded a $230,000 contract to surveying firm Spencer B. Gross of Portland to map out the proposed area and another $200,000 contract to a partnership between Cornforth Consultants of Tigard and tunneling firm Law/Geoconsult International International of Atlanta to determine alternative tunnel routes. After several months of soil testing, TriMet announced that a tunnel would be feasible. In October, the agency released a report that identified three tunnel options: a "long tunnel" with a station serving the Oregon Zoo, the same long tunnel without a station, and a "short tunnel". Both long tunnels featured a western portal west of Sylvan while the short tunnel featured one on Canyon Road, and all three had an eastern portal near Jefferson Street in Portland's Goose Hollow neighborhood. These proposals were immediately met with opposition from West Hills residents who feared that tunneling activity would trigger landslides.
The station was designed by the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership (ZGF) architecture firm and built by Hoffman Construction Company, with engineering by Parsons Brinckerhoff. It opened in 1998 along with the rest of the westside MAX Line. Building Design & Construction named the station as its top public works project in 1999 in its Building Team Project of the Year competition.
In 2018, TriMet completed a $2.1 million renovation of the station's platform level. The agency partnered with ZGF for the renovation, which included mounting energy-efficient LED lighting and installing patterned tiles along the platform-side and elevator lobby walls. Artists from Mayer/Reed painted large-scale murals over the walls across the tracks from the platform.