Looks white and gold to my eyes. - Slog reader cliche, winner of last weeks Bertha before-after transformation caption contest.
"Looks white and gold to my eyes." - Slog reader "cliche," winner of last week's Bertha before-after transformation caption contest. WSDOT

The Washington State Department of Transportation held another update with the Seattle City Council this morning regarding our iconically broken tunnel boring machine. The front end of the machine is now fully exposed in the pit (woo?), and now the contractor has to dissemble all of Bertha's parts (yay?).

In the middle of WSDOT's update, however, city council member Mike O'Brien asked a good question: Will we ever really know what caused the machine to fail? What's considered a trade secret and what will be made public?

WSDOT's answer to that question didn't clarify much. "I think it will be a combination of both," WSDOT's Todd Trepanier said.

He continued:

"There will be some of that information that we will, by contract rights, be able to ask them, and they will share with us. And then some of that information will actually be between the manufacturer of the machine, Hitachi Zosen, and STP themselves. So we'll just see how that plays out and how much of that information that we are shared. Any information that we receive at the department will be public information."

So, in other words, to the extent that the cause of Bertha's damage is proprietary, there's no public accountability for that cause. Not too comforting when we're talking about the largest tunnel boring machine in the world, which probably has plenty of trade secrets lodged between its gears.

In other news, WSDOT announced that its contractor is aiming for a tentative—and very hazy, pleasedon'tgetyourexpectationsup—tunneling restart date in August. Great success!