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[Revive 755]

^ Really?  Looks more like a major rehab to me since it still has the truss bridge (Streetview) that a full replacement probably would have done away with.

I would go with a replacement of the long viaduct on I-90/I-94 from the Chinatown Feeder to about 15th Street near the Chicago Loop: Google aerial photo

[Henry]

^ Really?  Looks more like a major rehab to me since it still has the truss bridge (Streetview) that a full replacement probably would have done away with.

I would go with a replacement of the long viaduct on I-90/I-94 from the Chinatown Feeder to about 15th Street near the Chicago Loop: Google aerial photo

Good luck with that, because burying it in a trench or even underground would require a steep descent after crossing the Chicago River.

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: Reanimating Bertha, a Mechanical Behemoth Slumbering Under Seattle

SEATTLE — Sometime this fall, a huge vertical shaft lined with 84 concrete pilings, designed to hold back the slurry that defines underground Seattle, will be finished, and a Mr. Fix-It operation unlike any other will begin.

The world’s biggest tunnel-boring machine, nicknamed Bertha — which hit a pipe and was damaged in mid-December after only 1,000 feet of excavation — is down there in the dark, awaiting what may well be the world’s biggest industrial rescue operation.

“When you have such a big machine, you have a big intervention,” said Youssef Hashash, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who teaches tunneling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When things break, he added, “it all scales up, and it scales up the challenge as well that you have to overcome.”

[kkt]

N.Y. Times: Reanimating Bertha, a Mechanical Behemoth Slumbering Under Seattle

The world’s biggest tunnel-boring machine, nicknamed Bertha — which hit a pipe and was damaged in mid-December after only 1,000 feet of excavation — is down there in the dark, awaiting what may well be the world’s biggest industrial rescue operation.

It's worth pointing out that it's not at all clear that it was the pipe that damaged the boring machine.  That's mentioned elsewhere in the article.

[Kacie Jane]

Eh.  The way I interpret everything I've read, saying "it's not at all clear" that it was the pipe somewhat misstates things.  I think it is relatively clear that it was the pipe, though difficult/impossible to prove with 100% certainty.

The more important dispute, though, is who's going to be responsible for the cost overruns caused by the repair and the delay.  If the problem was a pipe that WSDOT knew about and should have communicated better about, then that's one factor in settling that dispute, but it's only one factor, and possibly not even the most important one.

[Brandon]

^ Really?  Looks more like a major rehab to me since it still has the truss bridge (Streetview) that a full replacement probably would have done away with.

I would go with a replacement of the long viaduct on I-90/I-94 from the Chinatown Feeder to about 15th Street near the Chicago Loop: Google aerial photo

Good luck with that, because burying it in a trench or even underground would require a steep descent after crossing the Chicago River.

And it's about as steep as it can be made right now.  Heavy trucks have issues climbing out of the Circle Interchange to cross both the South Branch of the Chicago River and the Stevenson Expressway.

[Bruce]

New video of the demolition of WA-99 (Aurora Avenue) above what was Broad Street at the north portal site.

[Henry]

New video of the demolition of WA-99 (Aurora Avenue) above what was Broad Street at the north portal site.

That's a very cool video! I wonder how the Bertha rescue mission is coming along.

[707]

New video of the demolition of WA-99 (Aurora Avenue) above what was Broad Street at the north portal site.

Sigh. I understand removing the Viaduct (which I'm not terribly happy about myself), but it saddens me to see part of the 1931-1939 US 99 Parkway that is Aurora Avenue being torn up, although I can see why it needs to happen.

[andy3175]

I wonder how the Bertha rescue mission is coming along.

Latest article I could find was from late Sept:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024575494_berthatourxml.html

It seems to have some of the same info as the previously cited NY Times article, along with a bit more detail on work to be performed in the meantime.

Ever since tunnel-boring machine Bertha got stuck last winter, there haven’t been many trucks delivering tools and concrete segments inside the giant tube. This lull allows enough room for workers behind the machine to start building the double-decker Highway 99 roadway at the Sodo end.

(Seattle Tunnel Partners) STP is trying to install 450 feet of the upper deck by March, when Bertha is supposed to resume digging, (Chris Dixon, project director) said. The machine is stuck 1,028 feet into its journey.

Before the $80 million machine can continue through downtown, its damaged main bearing must be replaced. The entire front end, some 30 feet long, will be largely rebuilt. Crews are now building a giant pit from which they can reach Bertha’s front end. In front of the machine’s cutter head, a 120-foot-deep concrete ring has been constructed and wells are now being positioned, to remove groundwater. A giant crane will be erected in mid-November, Dixon said, to lift Bertha’s front end to the surface, where it will be disassembled and rebuilt.

Bertha embarked on the 9,270-foot route from Sodo to South Lake Union in July 2013. The original schedule called for the tunnel to open to traffic at the end of 2015. But last December, the cutterhead turned without breaking soil, and grit penetrated the seals, contributing to overheating the front end. Dixon hopes a repaired Bertha will break through at South Lake Union in early 2016.

Even though Bertha is stuck, STP’s Dixon said construction on the overall tunnel project is roughly halfway done, and more than $900 million has been paid toward the $1.44 billion contract. The DOT has deducted some money because of a lack of forward progress but advanced other cash to STP for work at the north and south ends, said Matt Preedy, deputy Highway 99 administrator.

[Henry]

I think it's awesome that they're already paving the part of the roadway that has already been bored through. Hopefully Bertha can start moving again within a few months.

[cpzilliacus]

AASHTO Journal: Seattle Road Project Resumes After Pause for Archaeology Check on Shell Materials

Washington State Department of Transportation said state archaeologists gave Seattle Tunnel Partners the go-ahead on Nov. 2 to resume digging a rescue shaft toward a broken tunnel boring machine, part of a $3.1 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement project.

Contractors halted work Oct. 23 after workers digging the vertical shaft toward the giant tunnel digging device found shell material and called in experts to determine if it was related to the history of native tribes in the area.

But after days of examining the material, and triggering an established process of notifying area tribal authorities, archaeologists believed the shells came from commercial shellfish activities by early Seattle settlers around the start of the 20th Century, WSDOT explained, and allowed the construction work to resume.

[Bickendan]

"Oh, it's only early city history. Not important!"

[jakeroot]

Well, everyone's shitting bricks again:

SeattleWeekly.com: Pessimism Grows Over Tunnel Project; Seattle City Council Is Reaching Wit’s End

“At some point is the pain is going to be so great that we ask, ‘Is there a Plan B?’ This is like a nightmare you don’t wake up from,” Council member Nick Licata tells Seattle Weekly.

The risk O’Brien refers to is the possibility, however remote, that the 61-year-old viaduct is on its last legs and that additional drilling to forge a rescue pit to unearth the state's damaged $80 million tunnel boring machine may not be the wisest, or safest, of options–not when 30 Pioneer Square businesses appear to have sunk an inch or more over the past month. “Who knows how much longer it will remain standing,” O’Brien tells the Weekly. “Will it be another two to three years? And what then? What if a truck damages a piling or whatever? So is continuing to dig the pit the best thing or should we repair it from the back?”

Regardlesss of WSDOT assurance, O’Brien has not ruled out shutting down the city-run highway that runs along the 2.1 mile double-decker, which carries 100,000 vehicles a day.

“It concerns me,” says Council member Tom Rasmussen, who chairs the Transportation Committee, “that WSDOT may not be sharing information as quickly as they should.”

[Alps]

Well, everyone's shitting bricks again:

SeattleWeekly.com: Pessimism Grows Over Tunnel Project; Seattle City Council Is Reaching Wit’s End

See, this is what happens when you build a city on a bunch of hastily shoveled fill. Any time you do something on one end of the fill, it all starts shifting and flowing and finding a new lowest-energy solution. It's not really the tunnel's fault, though I still don't know why the pipe that killed Bertha wasn't noticed beforehand. More than anything, it's the 19th century engineers who didn't have the geotechnical knowledge we now possess.

[jakeroot]

Well, everyone's shitting bricks again:

SeattleWeekly.com: Pessimism Grows Over Tunnel Project; Seattle City Council Is Reaching Wit’s End

See, this is what happens when you build a city on a bunch of hastily shoveled fill. Any time you do something on one end of the fill, it all starts shifting and flowing and finding a new lowest-energy solution. It's not really the tunnel's fault, though I still don't know why the pipe that killed Bertha wasn't noticed beforehand. More than anything, it's the 19th century engineers who didn't have the geotechnical knowledge we now possess.

One of my favorite old photos of Seattle sort of sums up the RH Thomson era:

[seicer]

Whoa. Something I did not know before!

[KEK Inc.]

http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2014/12/09/cracks-appear-in-buildings-near-bertha/20170195/

Looks like the water pumped for the repair hole is causing more issues for Pioneer Sq.

[Henry]

When a highway project goes way behind schedule, you know that's a nightmare waiting to happen. Just ask the people in Boston.

[Alps]

Update: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/Contents/Item/Display/2023

[andy3175]

And more from today ... excavation above Bertha the tunneling machine is scheduled to resume this evening (Tuesday 12/16) after 10 days of investigating why subsidence was occurring to nearby properties and possibly affecting the viaduct ... http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2014/12/16/tunnel-contractor-gets-green-light-to-resume.html

The Washington Post also chimed in with http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/seattle-council-hearing-about-cracks-near-tunnel/.

[oscar]

The Washington Post also chimed in with http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/seattle-council-hearing-about-cracks-near-tunnel/.

That's the Washington Times (a/k/a the "Moonie paper"), not the Post.  But it was only carrying an Associated Press story, which will probably show up in other papers too.

[andy3175]

That's the Washington Times (a/k/a the "Moonie paper"), not the Post.  But it was only carrying an Associated Press story, which will probably show up in other papers too.

Thank you for the correction!

[jakeroot]

According to Seattle Tunnel Partners, completion has been pushed to August 2017: WSDOT: Waterfront tunnel opening delayed until Aug. 2017

A new highway tunnel through downtown Seattle won't be open until August 2017, about 20 months behind schedule, state transportation officials said Monday.

The contractor, Seattle Tunnel Partners, said it expects to resume tunneling in April.

"Schedule is very important to us," Matt Preedy with the Department of Transportation said in a call with reporters. "At the end of the day, this is a safety job." He added, "The state fully intends to stay the course and complete this job."

The August 2017 date is outlined in a monthly schedule the contractor provides to the transportation agency, and it could change again, Preedy said.

[Bickendan]

So, Little Dig? Big Dig: West Coast?