Olympia, Seattle and a hole in the ground

It was not a good idea to start with, it is no better now, and it is getting stupider.

Background: on the saltwater side of downtown Seattle, there is a double-decker highway called the Alaskan Way viaduct. Built in the '50s, after the Nisqually quake of '01, it was looking a bit shaky. So they decided to replace the viaduct with a tunnel.

The biggest problem with the tunnel idea, apart from its ridiculous pricetag, is the fact that it will go through Seattle, whereas traffic studies have shown that the lion’s share of viaduct traffic is into and out of the city. Add tolls to the reduced traffic and this thing will never pay for itself.

So they bought an eighty million dollar boring machine (creative nicknamed “Bertha”, I guess after my grandmother :wink: ) and managed to go a thousand feet before breaking the damn thing. Now it will cost 50% more than the borer itself just to fix it.

A hole in the ground (now two), what does one do with such a thing. If we had Bo in the neighborhood, he could go down there and throw stuff in it. As it is, only money is being thrown in there.

Is it possible that these numbnutses can be convinced of their hammerheadedness? Is there a realistic way to just fill in this mistake and figure something else out (like, maybe, a nice soaring cablestay bridge that adds a sort of municipal-artistic beauty to the city) or is civil engineering a practice in autistic OCD?

I fully endorse this pit.

If they can set the cameras right, they can make their money back by packaging it as a sci-fi movie remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth].

You don’t have to copy everything we do in Boston. (Besides which, I don’t think our bridge is all that beautiful, and you don’t really have a place to put it.)

Pitting a pit? Is that even legal?

ETA: %^&&$!!@#

When they started talking about this hole, the Big Dig was the first thing I thought of. It was brought up by someone in the media, and of course, “Oh no, it won’t be like that!” :rolleyes:

Could’ve paid for a lot of bus service (see the Selfish SOB’s thread).

I grew up near Seattle, so I know the area pretty well; and I moved to Boston about midway through the Big Dig. For all the hassle and expense Boston went through, things are better now. (Whether they’re $14-billion better could be debated.) Our Central Artery and your Viaduct weren’t gonna last forever.

How the hell did they break the boring machine, though? (And who designed the thing so this part could only be fixed from the front?)

Engineers! See the engineer pit next to the selfish SOB pit. It’s all coming together!

The article says they hit a steel well casing left behind after the government did some groundwater tests in 2002 and 2010.

Yo dawg!

One of the first steps in the Big Dig was to locate all the utilities (pipes and wires) that were running where the new tunnel would go. This was not a trivial undertaking; the route was right next to one of Boston’s oldest neighborhoods and even the utilities didn’t know where everything was under the streets.

But not knowing about something from 2002 seems like a bit of a fuckup.

I have nothing to add, except that my grandmother, too, was named Bertha.

Subways make more sense some places than others.

Los Angeles was foolish to run a subway through geologically unstable areas. Light surface rail would have made more sense.

(San Diego had the good sense to build light surface rail. We saved mucking oodles of money.)

Ample woman, would you say?

Did they say why?

It has been a while, but I guess one of their reasons may have had to do with the success of the bus tunnel. Problem is, the bus tunnel goes under the “regrade”: the part of Seattle that is already above stuff. This new tunnel goes under Alaskan Way, which itself is about eight feet higher than sea level and runs along the docks. So, part of their justification had to do with repairing the seawall next to Alaskan Way (where it was quake-damaged).

As far as traffic patterns reported by WSDOT, as far as I can tell, it was “What? Never saw that. We just see cars going from E. Marginal Way through to Aurora, we never noticed anyone using those other ramps.” Or something like that.

And, of course, getting rid of the viaduct opens up some nice views of Elliot Bay that could become premium real estate – a tunnel would leave that wide open.

Well I went to school. In Olympia.

Moleman Tech, LLC

It could be worse.

They are installing a ROTARY in front of my school.

In RHODE ISLAND.

This will NOT end well

Tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with nothing wasn’t viable, and neither was leaving it up until it falls over.