Terminal 1–Lindbergh station
Terminal 1–Lindbergh station is a light rail station on the Metro Blue Line. It is the only underground station on the Blue Line and is located below ground level at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport. It is a center-platform station that is accessed by escalator or elevator. Service began at the site when the second phase of the Blue Line opened on December 4, 2004.
Design
The location of this station directly below a major airport caused challenges for its designers. The tunnel and the station both had to be carefully designed to meet Federal Aviation Administration safety requirements. Passengers can access this station from the transit center in the "Hub Building", which is reached by taking the Minneapolis–St. Paul Airport Trams, a people mover from the main terminal.Due to concerns about terrorism, the tunnels were designed to be highly blast-resistant. The underground portion was the costliest section of the entire rail project.
This station was excavated after the two main tunnel tubes were constructed with a tunnel boring machine. The station box is high, wide, and approximately long. The station is the largest subterranean public space in Minnesota. During the excavation of the tunnels, a buried river valley was encountered a few hundred feet south of the station.
Lindbergh Station is unheated, but maintains a temperature of roughly year-round because of its underground location.