Bertha is about to dig near Seattle’s Pike Place Market
Aug 29, 2016, 2:59 PM | Updated: 4:23 pm
Bertha has entered zone 6, out of 10 zones. It is now underneath an old railway tunnel and sewer line. (WSDOT)
(WSDOT)
Bertha has finished digging through five of the 10 zones needed for completion of the new SR 99 tunnel under downtown Seattle. Now in zone 6, it will soon dig along side the Pike Place Market.
This is how tall the rings are that Bertha is building
The machine has entered zone 6, though that doesn’t mean the job is 50 percent complete. Not all of the 10 zones are equal in length. In fact, Bertha is about 45 percent done with the job.
Bertha Zone 6
Currently, the machine is under 1st Avenue and Union Street. That places it under a combination of newer, and rather old downtown Seattle buildings. At approximately 170 feet below the surface, Bertha is also below an underground railway tunnel built in 1904, and a major sewer tunnel that connects downtown sewers to the West Point Treatment Plant.
Bertha will now continue to travel underneath 1st Avenue until it reaches Stewart Street where it will start to curve left toward its end goal. Zone 6 runs from Union to Stewart, and is about 1,050 feet. Within that distance, Bertha will pass along the east side of Pike Place Market.
Bertha has bored 745 feet so far this August, with two days left in the month. That is considerably more than July’s 312 feet, though the machine was stopped for half of the month to undergo maintenance.
