Highway Boondoggle May Sink Seattle

The world’s largest tunneling machine, stuck 60 feet under downtown Seattle since December 2013, is causing even more headaches these days. Bertha – that’s the machine’s name – is teaching a hard lesson about sunk costs – and how trying to dig a project out of a hole can make matters much, much worse.

Jeff Inglis

Policy Analyst

The world’s largest tunneling machine, stuck 60 feet under downtown Seattle since December 2013, is causing even more headaches these days. Bertha – that’s the machine’s name – is teaching a hard lesson about sunk costs – and how trying to dig a project out of a hole can make matters much, much worse. The New York Times last week evoked Biblical “plagues of locusts” when describing the difficulties the tunnel has caused, and may yet create.

Put to work because transportation planners chose the most expensive, least beneficial way to replace the earthquake-vulnerable Alaskan Way Viaduct (as we documented in our September 2014 report Highway Boondoggles: Wasted Money and America’s Transportation Future), Bertha got through barely 1,000 feet of the two miles of the tunnel she was supposed to create before stopping short.

Officials of the company operating Bertha say she hit an eight-inch steel pipe left over from past Washington State Department of Transportation work, but state officials claim she just broke down on her own. Bertha was supposed to finish the tunnel in October; state officials now say there is no way to say when the project might be completed.

A $125 million rescue mission is under way, drilling a hole straight down to reach Bertha’s drilling face so repairs can be made. That’s where Bertha’s story gets even worse for the people of Seattle.

In November, workers digging the repair hole began pumping groundwater out, to allow digging to continue. Pioneer Square, the section of downtown closest to the digging and pumping, sank more than an inch since 2010. Building owners in the area have reported new and widening cracks in their buildings’ walls and foundations, and transportation workers are monitoring 30 structures for potential damage.

While studies of all the potential causes of the sinking center of Seattle remain ongoing, public attention is fixed firmly on Bertha’s problems as a key cause of the subsiding soil. And a map released by WSDOT shows that the digging site is the epicenter of citywide settling. (See image below; the red dot is the site of the rescue hole.)

A crack on King Street, which has been there since at least 2011 but residents say has worsened recently, was scanned by ground-penetrating radar in hopes of deepening understanding of the underground mess.

The sinking appears to have stopped, but so did the digging of the rescue hole – at least for a time; it resumed yesterday. And if the cause of the sinking is determined to be the pumping of groundwater, the rescue hole may have to be filled in to preserve the surrounding buildings. That would deal an enormous setback to this colossally problematic project.

The cost of repairs is already growing. On Monday, city councilors were told that the subsiding ground has damaged water mains, which now need to be replaced – at a yet-to-be-determined cost. The bill will likely be paid by the state.

Nevertheless, non-tunnel work on the replacement continues; WSDOT’s project manager told the Seattle City Council this week that the project is about 70 percent done, including both work complete and “dollars paid” out. This drew a ridicule: An opinion columnist cracked that “The tunnel project appears 70 percent complete the same way the Donner Party’s trip to California was 70 percent complete.”

The private company hired to do that work has already asked for almost $200 million in additional payments for work it says is beyond the scope of the original contract. And that company, Tutor Perini, has a decades-long history of bidding low on municipal projects, taking advantage of unintentionally vague language in construction contracts, and forcing taxpayers not only to foot the bill for higher building costs but also years of legal proceedings.

If the threat of unending legal costs and millions in unforeseen project expenses wasn’t enough, the fact that Seattle is sinking also further threatens the stability of the already unstable Alaskan Way Viaduct – the very road this whole project was created to replace.

Now, Washington transportation officials are making a plan for what to do if they have to close the Viaduct and have no tunnel into which to divert the traffic. Washingtonians are right back where they started – only billions of dollars poorer and years later.

This fiasco, whose financial, political, logistical and civic costs are not even close to being tallied yet, is a reminder of the need to fully understand costs, benefits, needs and risks of highway investment. This is particularly true in light of how transportation priorities have changed – and will continue to change – over time.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct seemed like a bright idea in the 1940s. The tunnel seemed like a bright idea a decade ago – at least to some people. Now, mired in unknown costs and litigation, the tunnel is a grave for money, civic energy and time that could have been – and could still be – spent building Seattle transportation projects that expand mobility options for everyone.

Authors

Jeff Inglis

Policy Analyst