Seattle Light-Rail Tunnel Likely to Break Ground This Year

In keeping with our theme of rising costs on tunnel projects, the Brightwater sewage-treatment plant and treated waste pipeline project in King County Washington (Seattle area) is now up to at least $1.84 billion according to the lead consultant on the project. The treated waste pipeline is 13 to 14-miles long and at depths of 40 to 440-ft! It is being constructed nearly entirely by TBM. One source of delay was due to a tunneling subcontractor  not being able to get parts (ball bearings?) because they were all being requisitioned by the US War Department for use in military equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Click through for information sources and links. 

[…]

Schnabel Engineering has opened a new office in the Pacific Northwest to service their dam engineering clients.  Two dam engineers from their Greensboro, N.C. office relocated there to get it established.  They have been working for […]

A federal judge in Seattle dismissed a lawsuit Friday aimed at stopping construction of a tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Judge John Coughenour said the people who brought the suit in September hadn’t […]