The practice session — peculiarly designed todig a burrow underneath downtown Seattle , building new car content to replace an aging , seism - damaged viaduct that has dominated Seattle ’s waterfront since the 1950s — has a name ( Bertha , in honor of Seattle’sfirst female mayor ) , a wisecrackingTwitter bill , and a smile , shovel - exert animated cartoon semblance .
https://gizmodo.com/big-bertha-is-digging-seattles-massive-underground-fre-662469199
Last Saturday , some 5,000 people came to its going - away party , the last chance for Seattleites to see the machine that , on Tuesday morning , began grinding through the earth beneath their fundament for the next year and a half . It was as much a party as any construction internet site can be , with food for thought trucks and confetti amid the bulldozer and meditative waistcoat .
figure courtesy ofWSDOT .
Bertha ’s sure as shooting big enough to justify the plug . The large - diameter drill in the humankind ( its boring face is five report marvellous ) , it was ship from Japan to Seattle in 41 separate pieces back in April ; its cutterhead alone press almost 800 stacks .
picture courtesy ofWSDOT .
The whole thing is over 300 feet long — and that ’s not counting the two miles of conveyor rap that will stretch out behind it , carrying hundreds of M of cubic yards of grit , shit and rock out of the tunnel and onto await barges .
Bertha comes with its own control room , workshop , and lunchroom for the 25 workers who will mold inside it ( that ’s ripe , inside – even many of the cutting surfaces are design to be replaceable from within ) , as well as a couple of giant arms designed to insure the burrow ’s walls ( assembled inside Bertha ’s shield and installed , ring by ring , behind it as it run ) .
Still , all the celebration — the I Heart Bertha prickle , the gee - whiz signage — couldn’t help but feel a bit strained : an effort to end the doorway on the long and often contentious path that led to the champagne bottle blow up across Bertha ’s broad back .
Theviaduct that the young tunnel is meant to replacewas a 1950s solution to a 1950s dealings problem ; even the city technologist at the clock time reportedly looked at the designs and said , “ It is not beautiful . ” The viaduct elevate a double layer of cars , truck and bus above the city ’s shopping mall , leaving the streets below in unceasing shadow and noise and partially cutting the city ’s waterfront , with its beautiful views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains , off from the residuum of business district .
Dave Bird , a general declarer who attended the launch party , aver he looked onward to Seattle make headway a multi - use waterfront more like Vancouver , British Columbia ’s . “ Ours is just a magnanimous concrete affair with cars on it , ” he state me .
Bertha start her life history in Japan , constructed while by small-arm , in section . range courtesy ofWSDOT .
In 2001 , after an seism damaged the viaduct , it became light that it could not withstand another firm one . And so start a decade - long process of come up with an alternative . The metropolis looked into another raised road and a contract - and - cover burrow , but voters decline both . The rich - bore tunnel idea , too , was initially rejected as too expensive .
A identification number of mathematical group press to simply remove the viaduct without building a lineal alternative , arguing that surface street , improved transit , and other , upgrade path could sop up the viaduct ’s dealings , and that other cities had removed downtown freeways without sick effects .
Arguments tantalize in public hearings and editorial pageboy about which approach was the in force for the metropolis ’s future : the greenest , the most in effect , the most forward - cerebration ( which , to many , means the least railcar - centric ) . At times it felt like a public debate not about a commutation route , but about the soul of the urban center .
Bertha is assemble inside her future calamus in Seattle . trope courtesy ofWSDOT .
There are still hard feelings . Some come from those who feel that politicians ram the tunnel idea through ; from taxpayers who worry the dig will be a boondoogle ; from theodolite exponent who mourn rain buckets billions of dollars into ever more infrastructure for private cars ; and even from commuters who are disordered to lose the viaduct at all , with its quick business district approach and beautiful thought .
One woman tell me that she was mad about thetunnel plan , but asked not to print that info alongside her name because “ there are those in my life who are still passing angered about it , who shout when they consider about anything to do with the tunnel . ”
At the launch company , though , there were passel of Bertha boosters , and the emotion most in grounds was curiosity . Seattleites strolled around the situation ask interrogative sentence of engineers and Department of Transportation employees : How will the drilling bear upon buildings ? How will the tunnel be air ? What will happen to all the stain ?
They stood in long crease to lean over catwalk , craning their cameras to catch the telescope of the recitation and the 80 - foot deep fossa in which it rested . Many bring children , who gawk at the sheer size of the machinery and collected toughie from a succession of data place : conveyor system , top executive informant , cutterhead .
One pricker came from hold out some unassembled sections of a future burrow halo — monumental , curved slabs of concrete that , together , will finally combine to form a minuscule slice of the complete tube . The sections were set out so that people could signalise them or spell content — a kind of twenty-first - century cave art — which would be cemented underground as long as the tunnel lasts .
Many of the messages mass select to send underground with Bertha were simple : “ Good luck , ” “ Bon voyage , ” “ poke straight ! ” and “ See you on the other side . ” People wrote their name , their hometown , their pride that they or their kin member had worked on the project . Someone wrote , “ civic technology rules ! ” Someone drew a bicycle and write , “ Yah , put all the motorcar underground ! ” Someone else : “ In 2013 we really have a go at it our cars . Sorry . ”
The messages were a small , phantasmagoric reminder of the next Seattleites who might someday encounter them , who will see in today ’s public works a relic of how the city once envisioned , rightly or wrong , its own succeeding self . Their lettering transformed the tunnel into a sentence space capsule , a reverse archaeological site : burying a dodo message for the future instead of digging one up from the past .
Bertha make contact , breaking ground on Tuesday , July 30 , 2013 . Images courtesy ofWSDOT .
Uncaptioned photograph byBrooke Jarvis .
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