Posted on 01/14/2014 8:20:28 PM PST by steve86
After drilling four deep shafts and sending a man down to look last week, Seattle Tunnel Partners and the state Department of Transportation don’t fully know yet what’s blocking tunnel machine Bertha, some 60 feet deep next to Pioneer Square.
So the DOT announced Tuesday it is “going hyperbaric,” by sending workers to the pressurized cutting face. Teams of five or six workers would take turns inspecting the huge area.
Bertha is equipped with two hatches for men and one for equipment, to reach a five-foot wide chamber where excavated muck enters the conveyor system, right behind the 57-foot rotary cutter face. However, DOT says the workers won’t need to wear scuba gear, but will simply need time for their bodies to adapt to pressure changes.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.seattletimes.com ...
Speaking as the person who built the channel tunnel TBs as well as many others. There is something fundementaly wrong with that machine, and its operators. Not sure what kind of cutters they are using. Disc cutters should have been able to handle expected pipe & concrete.
Illustration makes no sense.
Same here. The last article I saw, said they'd discovered a pipe of some kind that wasn't showing on their documentation of the area.
Oh well, I guess it's back to the buried ancient UFO theory...
Just hire 100 illegal Mexicans. They have lot of experience digging tunnels.
Collapsium gull plating does tend to have that effect.
I was thinking of that same Brit flick but dang if I can remember the name of it.
do not agree because a garbage disposal aka insinkerator has a few blades while this tunneling machine has hundreds so much more difficult to jam on a small object
I stress test my garbage disposal all the time for fun
It’s Jimmy Hoffa’s body. . .
They’ve hit the cryocrystaline-multititanium-monolith planted by aliens a million years ago. No man-made tools will even scratch it. Its existence was known by a select group of people who finally located its position with the aid of aerospace scientists and engineers.
This is not a highway tunnel project but is actually a mission to raise the monolith to the surface. The cover story will soon be abandoned and Bill Gates will be sent down to decipher the symbols displayed on its surface. He will not succeed and will turn the job over to the obamacare programmers. They will finally break the mystery and reveal the message: “If you like your health care, you can keep it!”
They designed Bertha as a means to quickly dig a tunnel. At this rate, it would have been faster to dig it using pick and shovel.
The abandoned well casing story never made sense to me.
How so? Do you have ANY clue the technical challenges they faced?
Actually, now that you mention it, yes I do. Since I’m not only politically involved in my community but I’m directly affected by this fiasco I’ve tried to keep abreast of develops on the project.
Please understand that this folly is years in the making. The left has dominated the government in this area for years and years to the point where they have managed to replace planners, engineers, and administrators with politically partisan planners, engineers, and administrators. As a result practical engineering and growth management has been supplanted by political correctness.
The Viaduct is an aging limited access highway (predates freeway) that runs along the Seattle waterfront north <> south. It is absolutely critical to the movement of traffic in the downtown area. It is old and in need of replacement. It also happens to cross a subduction faultline. In our last quake the Viaduct suffered some slight damage but came through in pretty good shape overall. None of that matters to our illustrious leftists whose primary objective was to recapture the waterfront.
In the wake of the earthquake, the left seized in the moment (and the ill-ease of the citizenry) to insist that now was the time to replace it. Study and debate ensued and in the end The People determined that they wanted it replaced with like~for~like. So naturally the leftists in charge decided to hell with The People - we want what we want - and told us that they were going to replace the Viaduct with a tunnel.
There were battles both in the press, at the ballot box, and in the courts. The left lost at every turn but held to their insistence. It was all horribly expensive - but not to the left who was using public money for their fight.
In the end they prevailed, despite the will of The People, and all of the seismic evidence introduced to show why a tunnel is a terrible idea.
The fact is, they haven’t even encountered the real problems yet. Everything so far has been self-inflicted. It’s costing us somewhere north of 10 times what replacing the Viaduct would have cost, and for that we get 33% less capacity and a goddamned tunnel that promises to be an albatross for the next 50 years.
“Five Million Years to Earth/Quatermass and the Pit”
Great Movie!
Considering the location, I am thinking the final foundations of the Barad-Dur.
Outstanding post, and right on target.
The Alaskan Way Viaduct could have been replaced at MUCH less cost and with much greater engineering justification than this “tunnel” idiocy. This sucker will be BELOW sea level for its entire length. Seattle sits on what’s called “glacial till”. It ain’t bedrock.
Oh well, you said eveything important.
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