In Our View: Learn Lessons From Bertha

It is an undertaking that has been derided from various angles for various reasons. And while Seattle’s Highway 99 tunnel project will continue to be examined and debated for years to come, a bit of progress achieved this week is noteworthy.

After digging 1.75 miles under the streets of the city, the tunnel-boring machine known as Bertha has reached daylight. Bertha, with a diameter of 57 feet that makes it the world’s largest machine of its kind, broke through a retaining wall that marked the end of its journey.

Not that everybody is celebrating. “Only in bonkers, leftist Seattle would an absurdly stupid project that’s massively behind schedule and over cost, would finishing be considered a success,” said state Sen. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane. Never mind that Seattle residents pay much more in taxes that they receive from state government or that they help fund services throughout Washington — when in doubt, accuse them of being leftists.

Partisan diatribes aside, it is difficult to say whether or not Bertha’s journey has been successful. The 9,270-foot tunnel was beset by problems, including a two-year delay after the machine failed. (What exactly caused the failure, and who should pay the damages, have resulted in competing lawsuits between contractor Seattle Tunnel Partners and the state Department of Transportation. The courts ultimately will hand out the invoices for the project.)

The tunnel eventually will house a two-tier road to replace State Route 99, which currently travels along the Alaskan Way Viaduct behind Pike Place Market, between downtown Seattle and Puget Sound’s Elliott Bay. The entire project is earmarked with a price tag of $3.1 billion, and it long has been a political football. Seattle voters rejected the proposal before eventually approving it; conservatives have complained about the cost and the state’s process for developing transportation projects; environmentalists have argued that cities should be expanding transit access rather than roads.

In other words, it seems that just about everybody has reason to be unhappy with the Highway 99 tunnel, and yet the project is going through. That is because there are, indeed, compelling arguments in favor of it. For one, the viaduct was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake and remains a hazard. For another, the viaduct was built during the city-planning abomination that was 1950s, when highways were preferable to accessible waterfronts.

Portland planners, for example, cut off the east side of the Willamette River in favor of Interstate 5, an act that remains inexcusable to this day. In Seattle, the Alaskan Way Viaduct leaves little access between the downtown core and the waterfront, minimizing one of the city’s notable attributes.

Removal of the viaduct — the tunnel is expected to open in 2019 — will be a boon to Seattle’s waterfront, but there are good reasons to question whether this was the best way to achieve that goal. The Washington State Department of Transportation has become a favorite punching bag of fiscal conservatives, and the key in moving forward will be to learn from the project and enact meaningful reform. The agency has adopted 10 reforms and is tracking its progress, and the Highway 99 tunnel project can help provide guidelines for future improvements — specifically in developing more accurate budget projections and more efficient contingency plans.

But, for now, Bertha has completed its mission and cleared the way for a project that will change the look of Seattle. And that is cause for celebration.