According to Crosscut, it was a year ago today that we first learned that the giant tunneling machine “Bertha” had become stuck in the muck beneath Seattle. One year later, Bertha remains stuck, and construction of a deep bore tunnel replacement to the teetering Alaskan Way Viaduct remains no closer to completion.
On this anniversary of ineptitude it is useful to remember whose brainchild this boondoggle was in the first place: none other than Seattle’s infamously faith-based “think” tank, the Discovery Institute! Yes, that Discovery Institute—the equally proud progenitors of the science-denying theory of so-called Intelligent Design! As I scoffed nearly 7 years ago today:
I once proposed building a gigantic rollercoaster along the West Seattle to downtown portion of the Monorail’s abandoned Green Line, and you didn’t see my joke of a transportation proposal picked up by the MSM, let alone labeled “visionary”. And yet the Seattle Rollercoaster Project is no less technically challenging nor politically, well, utterly fucking ridiculous than Discovery’s deep bore, crosstown tunnel. Engineering and economic feasibility aside, God himself could descend from the heavens with a blueprint in one hand and an infinite supply of cash in the other, only to be greeted by polar bear clad environmentalists and angry Eastside developers complaining that He isn’t doing enough to ease congestion on I-405. In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.
Of course, with hindsight, I was wrong about the political feasibility. A cabal of elected officials ultimately shoved Bertha down our throats. Where it remains lodged to this day.
I had to move
Really had to move
That’s why if you please
I am on my bended knees
Bertha, don’t you come around here any more
The discovery institute thought of it, but that useless waste of human skin, Christine Gregoire, made it a reality.
How can we get another public vote, like we did 34 times for the monorail and cancel the tunnel and pay off the boondoggle before it gets even worse?
It’s so typical DUMMOCRETIN to deliver blame on someone or some group other than the real culprit. It’s WADOT to blame for Bertha. Plain and simple. The chose Seattle Tunnel Partners to create the tunnel. Then it was delayed by WA State impact policies. STP is the blame. Butt, you have to find some conservative outfit to match the “perceived” grievance! Who controls this state? Surely not conservatives. You brag how WA State is so efficient. Well you have to accept the BAD with that “perceived” good!
Remember it was WADOT back in January whom
http://www.king5.com/story/new...../13373748/
Sheesh Goldy, those DUMMOCRETIN contacts really blind you to facts.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
So is it too early to create future addition to Underground Seattle signs? Come see Big Bertha! In Neon?
Think Seattle will ever have a subway system? Perhaps not.
Personally though I’m cheering for Bertha to get moving again. There maybe other solutions to the viaduct but all of them are messy, expensive, and political. If there were an easy solution Seattle would have replaced the viaduct 20 years ago when it was approaching old age and design limits. If it should collapse though what happens then? Dollar to a donut that Bertha gets fixed damn the torpedoes.
@5
Bertha was messy, expensive, and political. The other solutions were cheaper but not what the big money land owners wanted. So we got Bertha in spite of what the voters wanted.
@4 Typical Puddy Drivel (TM; patent pending). Ask yourself, who benefits from spending an extra billion or two of taxpayers’ money for digging a tunnel instead of building a new viaduct? Not WSDOT. Hint: RICH DOWNTOWN PROPERTY OWNERS (who, I’ll bet, vote Republican).
WSDOT was planning for a tunnel years before the DI brought it up. PB brags that it was advising WSDOT about it since 1998:
“For the past 10 years, Parsons Brinckerhoff has served as general engineering consultant assisting the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) in developing alternatives to replace the seismically vulnerable Alaskan Way Viaduct, which runs 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) along the city’s waterfront, serving 110,000 vehicles each day. The firm has been involved in virtually every aspect of the $3.1 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement program, including conceptual design of a 2.7-kilometer (1.7-mile) tunnel to replace the viaduct.”
http://bulletin.pbworld.com/vo.....aduct.aspx