Bertha Could Complete Drilling Within A Few Days

SEATTLE, WA - It might be hard to believe, but Bertha, the SR99 tunnel boring machine, is within a few feet of completing its tunneling journey underneath Seattle.

As of Thursday, Bertha was just 188 feet from the finish line. On the high end, Bertha can move 50 feet in a day, which means that we might see the boring machine's nearly 10,000-mile journey end within the week.

The Washington state Department of Transportation still doesn't have an exact date for Bertha's breakthrough. However, it appears that tunneling will be complete almost two months early. Bertha was originally supposed to finish up tunneling in late May.

It's been a - pardon the pun - long road for Bertha getting here. In late 2013, after drilling just about 1,000 feet, Bertha was halted after hitting a steel pipe buried in the ground. Under repair, Bertha wouldn't move again for two years.

Then came the sinkhole. After Bertha resumed drilling in late 2015 after the two-year hiatus, a sinkhole formed in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. In mid-January 2016, Gov. Jay Inslee ordered drilling to stop so crews could figure out what caused the sinkhole. Drilling resumed on Feb. 23, and has been pretty uneventful - boring, you could say - ever since.

Even as Bertha finishes up drilling, construction crews are still working inside the tunnel installing roadways and other infrastructure. The most current estimate says the new SR99 tunnel could open by early 2019.

Image via WSDOT