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April 21, 2014 at 10:03 pm #611107
Alki WarriorParticipantI just saw today that it won’t move until March of next year 2015…lol
April 21, 2014 at 10:32 pm #807256
JanSParticipantgotta laugh…or you might start crying, huh….whose idea was this tunnel again?
April 22, 2014 at 1:08 am #807257
Militant ModerateMemberChina has ~60 tunnels *longer* than the Viaduct replacement …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_tunnels_by_type#Road
Alas, I suppose building tunnels is best left to superpower nations like China.
And Norway.
And France.
And Switzerland.
And Albania.
And Tajikistan.
And Iceland.
And the Faroe Islands.
April 22, 2014 at 2:25 am #807258
JoBParticipantonly a dummy plans to run that kind of tunnel through last century’s landfill…
this was bad planning from the get go
April 22, 2014 at 2:38 am #807259
Alki WarriorParticipantWhat I understand is that Big Bertha’s manufacturer Hitachi is having problems replacing one of Bertha’s parts. The warranty is contracted by the amount of distance Bertha digs which is 1,300 feet. It’s at about a thousand feet now. Hitachi still is under contract to make those repairs. With nine thousand feet to dig, do you really think that she can get the whole project done without breaking down again? DOT was lucky this time were it stopped, if it gets stuck under a major street or intersection down the line somewhere will the city tear it up and fix her again? Guess who’s going to pay for the costs overruns anyways? I bet Hitachi just can’t wait to celebrate once it pasts that the point of no return mark. LOL!!! Lynn Peterson is a joke and this is the legacy of Gregoire. But I still blame the Republicans for this mess..lol
April 22, 2014 at 10:00 am #807260
Alki WarriorParticipantWait,wait,wait hold everything. If my math is right, Bertha which isn’t so big anymore, will be out a total of eighteen months?…The lunacy of it all.
April 22, 2014 at 1:54 pm #807261
SmittyParticipant@Militant,
Not sure any of those countries were dumb enough to drill a tunnel through liquefiable soil (laced with lord knows what kind of crap ). They usually build through mountains. Much more predictable.
I predict that this is just the first Bertha stoppage. The next could very well take place under a building or immovable structure. They are fortunate that they can dig down and access Bertha this time.
April 22, 2014 at 2:19 pm #807262
JoBParticipantSmitty..
you and i don’t often agree
but on this we are in total agreement..
bad idea in the first place and the wrong equipment for the first part of this job
what were they thinking?
what were we thinking?
and no.. i didn’t vote for this fiasco
April 22, 2014 at 3:26 pm #807263
DuckitudeMemberHi: Don’t visit here much anymore… since we have been locked up down Lowman Beach Way… if you only knew.
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Thought you all would like a few reminders of one of the very influential folks who clearly helped to bring the tunnel fiasco to us, one of our very own, West Seattleite Patrick Gordon.
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See http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Expert-Viaduct-bored-tunnel-would-be-1302762.php
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http://djcoregon.com/news/2009/05/07/seattle-tunnel-bill-goes-to-governor/
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http://downtownseattle.com/pdf_files/resources/08-09DSA_AnnualReport.pdf
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Check page two of the 2008-09 DSA Annual Report, and I quote Mr. Patrick, the DSA Chair that year “As we entered this past year we paused to celebrate the Downtown Seattle Association’s Fifty Years of Vision, Growth & Community – a golden anniversary theme that proved quite prophetic in our historic 51st year. Of course I’m referring to the 100-year-impact decision to replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct with a deep-bored tunnel – a decision for which DSA has been a tireless advocate for the better part of the past decade.”
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All this kind of “reshaping” the earth in “man’s image” to “improve it” smacks of the usual “if you have the power, don’t be ashamed to use it” and a kind of lurking “manifest destiny” evil streak….
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I was hoping they would just knock the old viaduct down and let a north and a south Seattle organically develop and adapt to the new geography. It would. The theory that the centralization of industries, retail, residences and entertainment is the best way to go is so out-dated at this point in time and has been shown to be so unhealthy for humans, that I was just hoping for no replacement of I-99.
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The pain we would experience is called “withdrawal.” Some day “cold turkey” will be forced on us as this kind of engineering over-reaching collapses en masse…
April 22, 2014 at 5:40 pm #807264
wakefloodParticipantWhether or not you agree with the tunnel decision, you can’t call it an “engineering overreach”.
There’s literally hundreds of these things completed and hundreds in progress all over the globe. Including several just a few miles away from Bertha. And the material being bored through isn’t unique, either.
What is happening with Bertha is about a number of things (contractual relationships, financial strategies, planning, etc.), but pushing the technological envelope isn’t one of them.
Carry on…
April 22, 2014 at 6:38 pm #807265
skeeterParticipantI don’t want to start a frenzy – I just don’t recall the outcome of a basic question from McGinn’s candidacy (the first round.) Is there a final answer on the question “Who is responsible for cost overruns, the state or the city?” My recollection is that was a gray area. Is that still the case?
April 22, 2014 at 7:38 pm #807266
wakefloodParticipantThe answer is TBD based on what overruns may be identified and who is at cause for them. All if which is to say, these things will be debated in front of an arbiter, should they occur. But you need to include the contractor in your list of “responsible parties”.
April 22, 2014 at 7:47 pm #807267
JoBParticipant“The south Seattle waterfront sits upon reclaimed land comprised of decades of undocumented fill, debris and various organic deposits. Within the upper layers of the soil profile, numerous timber piles, thick wood deposits with buried trestles and railroad ties were expected to be encountered. The various undocumented fill deposits overlay soft to stiff estuarine and lacustrine deposits interbedded with strata of loose alluvium and beach deposits. Competent glacial till deposits are present at the tunnel invert near the initial TBM launch and become more prevalent as the depth of the tunnel increases. The consistency of geology within the upper reaches of the soil profile is highly variable with vast changes in composition over very short distances along the alignment. Depth to groundwater is subject to tidal influence and is as shallow as 7 ft below working grade.
Due to the nature of the soft, saturated, unstable soils, which included large volumes of undocumented organic fill and abandoned timber pile foundations, ground improvement was required in critical areas to mitigate tunneling risks. However, due to the unique nature of this project, a standard ground improvement program would not suffice.”
not only do they not know what is down there… they were not able to do the kind of soil prep where they are drilling that would properly stabilize the unknown.
add to that the assumptions made by engineers on this project about the removal of objects that were known to be there and you have a major cluster f…
i know about this because i read a lot of history so i know what went into the original infill … not to mention what was built on top of it… and sunk into it from time to time…
and because i had conversations with a very competent soils engineer when this was on the ballot who explained just exactly what the problems were likely to be.
i am not so happy to report that her assessment was dead on…
April 22, 2014 at 8:36 pm #807268
KBearParticipantJoB, of course you didn’t vote for this tunnel. It was never on a public ballot. It’s a good thing, too, or the armchair engineers would have put a stop to it and we’d be stuck with nothing.
April 22, 2014 at 9:19 pm #807269
wakefloodParticipantJoB, exactly what are the problems your soils person described? If it’s that there’s a likelihood of hitting various fill materials, that was known to all. Hell, I could have told you that.
If you’re assuming this is all about a 5 in. drain pipe, I suspect that is just a very small part of this situation. With the preponderance of the issues having little or nothing to do with what they may or may not run into. If that wasn’t the case, you’d see lots of crews drilling lots of new test bores to attempt to limit the risk. Have you heard of that happening? I haven’t, nor have I heard it reported. And as obvious as that work is to observe, I suspect it would be all over the news 24/7. Did I miss that on King 5?
April 22, 2014 at 11:51 pm #807270
SmittyParticipant“…………or the armchair engineers would have put a stop to it and we’d be stuck with nothing.”
And that’s a bad thing?
April 23, 2014 at 12:25 am #807271
waynsterParticipantNow the blame game who’s at fault in the corporate board room or state …….hmmm lol
April 23, 2014 at 1:00 am #807272
JoBParticipantwake..
they won’t be drilling test holes until bertha is ready to run again.. and then only if they run into the same problem again..
there really isn’t anyplace to drill them.. which is why the kind of soil stabilization that would normally occur in these kinds of soil conditions wasn’t done
the same will that would not accept a cut and cover tunnel along the waterfront because the viaduct would have had to come down first isn’t going to be so eager to accept test holes down first avenue that shut down the city’s transportation system.
yes, the soil conditions here were known.. and it was decided to dig in and hope for the best anyway.
that didn’t really turn out so well.
April 23, 2014 at 1:01 am #807273
JoBParticipantKBear..
this armchair engineer favored the cut and cover tunnel along the waterfront that would have created a tunnel.. a city park and stabilized the waterfront…
all without the need to wait for parts for Bertha.
April 23, 2014 at 1:04 am #807274
dobroParticipantWhen they came out with the options for the viaduct the cheapest, quickest solution was to repair and earthquake-proof the viaduct. That’s what I would have preferred. The developers, politicians with a grand “vision” of the waterfront as their legacy and other folks who will make a lot of money off the whole thing (assuming they ever finish it) made sure that was taken off the table quickly.
April 23, 2014 at 2:08 am #807275
wakefloodParticipantWell, not sure that anything was done “quickly” but I get your point. And for what it’s worth, I was for a cut and cover as well.
We’ll end up with the tunnel eventually but with some additional drama on the way. The Seattle Way…
April 23, 2014 at 2:20 am #807276
JoBParticipantwake..
we got what we got
and although we will be paying for it for a long long time
we won’t get it soon
April 23, 2014 at 2:24 am #807277
JoBParticipantdobro..
it might have been cheaper to shore up the viaduct
but pretty much impossible to shore up the soil that would liquify under it if another earthquake hit
if you spend much time in Portland you might want to avoid the Marquam bridge.. better known as the I-5 bridge.
it has the same problem and will do a real shimmy that it’s unlikely to survive if a big one hits…
April 23, 2014 at 3:29 am #807278
wakefloodParticipantRather be paying for infrastructure than most other things.
April 23, 2014 at 6:40 am #807279
JeannieParticipantI’m afraid the “tunnel vision” of our so-called leaders turned out to be tunnel vision. In the worst possible sense. It infuriates me if we have to pay a cent for the builder’s screw-up.
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