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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the Pffft!-Another-boring-story! dept.

On April 4, the world's largest tunnel boring machine broke through to the open air after almost four years underground. Called Bertha, the giant digger was tasked with the challenge of building a tunnel large enough to carry four lanes of motor traffic under the heart of Seattle. The story of how it made the 1.7 mi (2.7 km) journey under the skyscrapers of the port city is not only a tale of a remarkable machine, but also of civil engineering, geology, politics, luck, and proving the old adage that anything that can go wrong, will.

It's an interesting story in its own right, made more timely by announcements that Elon Musk has formed a tunneling company to alleviate traffic.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @08:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @08:25PM (#503117)

    Modern deep bore tunnels are water tight. The one here in Seattle is under the waterline for much of the route.

    Back in the early days of tunnel construction there was a lot of stuff like that that wasn't really well understood. The tunnel that goes under Steven's Pass was so long that people would pass out and asphyxiate during the roughly 2.5 mile trip. Eventually, they built a small dam to power ventilation fans that would help clear the tunnel of exhaust.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel#Ventilation_operations [wikipedia.org]