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The title of a The Wall Street Journal article might give Seattleites hope while frustrating them at the same time.

the headline reads for a story published this week.

There are hundreds of tunneling projects around the world, Wall Street Journal’s Dan Michaels writes. However, few have garnered as much attention as Seattle’s tunnel and the giant boring machine known as Bertha.

Related: Bertha delays nothing compared to those of early Seattle

Retired geotechnical engineer Joe Guertin told that “major cities can’t function without going underground.” The Journal reports machines have been digging tunnels without much notice.

The Wall Street Journal specifically points to Seattle’s project as one that hasn’t advanced “smoothly.” That includes a major two-year delay after Bertha struck metal pipes near where it started digging. Seattle’s experience with a project of this caliber is “unusual these days,” according to the Journal.

Since Bertha began tunneling, two sinkholes have developed behind it. The second forced the state to request the contractor stop digging until it was deemed safe to continue.

“Seattle has had a very unfortunate string of things gone wrong with your project,” Michaels said. “Things like that have happened in other places – one here, one there – I’m not aware of any other project that has had so many problems one after another.”

Michaels told ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dave Ross that the decision to use one machine for the Seattle tunnel is “ambitious.” Engineers, he said, have suggested using two, perhaps smaller machines to get the job done would have been a possibility.

Now, things seem to be moving along. Bertha moved several hundred feet this year, making it to the planned maintenance stop. It has now dug just over 1,500 feet.

The contractor for the project, Seattle Tunnel Partners, is now preparing to move the machine under the Alaskan Way Viaduct. That work will cause a two-week closure of the heavily used roadway for safety reasons.

Based on Michaels’ article, it sounds like there is hope, after all, Dave pointed out.

“I think so,” he responded. “Seattle has just had a string of misfortunes on this project.” He says part of that could be related to planning and the size of the project. “I think a lot of lessons have been learned.”