Bertha made her triumphant arrival in Seattle at the beginning of April to much fanfare. The $80 million machine traveled from Osaka, Japan to Seattle where it will dig the Route 99 tunnel beneath downtown Seattle. The tunnel will replace the 60-year-old Alaskan Way Viaduct at a cost of $3.1 billion.
According to Seattle’s KOMO News, who has some great video of Bertha being lowered into the pit, the head of the tunnel-boring machine alone weighs 838 tons and is five stories tall.
Washington State DOT told KOMO everything is on schedule to begin boring in July. At a pace of about 30 feet per day, the tunnel is scheduled to open in 2015.