Bertha Is About to Drill Under the Viaduct—Here Are Five Questions That Still Haven't Been Answered

Bertha getting ready to dive under the viaduct. What could possibly go wrong? WSDOT

Bruce Harrell seemed like he was in a hurry. State representatives were answering questions from city council members about the plan to spend two weeks drilling a giant tunnel under the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle’s aging elevated highway. But the Seattle City Council president reminded his colleagues that council time was ticking by.

“Page four of a 19-page PowerPoint over there,” he said, signaling that there were many PowerPoint pages left to go in this presentation and he wanted to move on past the questions. Todd Trepanier, the Washington State Department of Transportation’s tunnel project administrator, thanked Harrell for being conscious of time constraints.

Really, the state’s whole presentation on drilling beneath the viaduct felt brief and perfunctory—even though as the council was listening to the briefing, workers in a hyperbaric gas bubble were undertaking some of the most challenging and expensive maintenance work on the machine to date. We don’t know exactly when Bertha will be ready to dive under the viaduct after the machine’s underground touch-up at “Safe Haven 3,” though the state says it’s sometime soon…