SEATTLE — Bertha’s bed is ready.
Seattle Tunnel Partners finished building a pit — 80 feet deep and 400 feet long — that will serve as the launch pad for a huge boring machine called Bertha.
The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reports the 7,000-ton machine that arrived in pieces aboard a ship from Japan is being reassembled in the pit.
Drilling on a two-mile Highway 99 tunnel under downtown Seattle starts this summer. The tunnel is expected to open in 2015, allowing the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
