bertha.jpg
Crews in Japan have just installed the cutterhead on the massive new SR 99 tunnel boring machine. The machine will be shipped to Seattle next Spring, with work on the new tunnel starting next Summer. (WSDOT image)

Seattle tunnel machine gets name, identity and Twitter handle

BY Josh Kerns  on December 10, 2012 @ 3:29 pm (Updated: 4:14 pm - 12/10/12 )

If you're going to be the biggest tunnel digging machine in the world, you deserve a beefy name to back it up. That's the thinking of the Washington State Department of Transportation, which announced Monday the massive machine that will dig the new tunnel beneath downtown Seattle is now officially named "Bertha".

The name was chosen as part of a contest for kindergarten through 12th-grade students. It had to be female and have significance to Washington state heritage, life, nature, transportation or engineering. The name, picked by a panel of judges that included Gov. Chris Gregoire and Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, honors Bertha Knight Landes. She was elected mayor of Seattle in 1926, the first woman to lead a major American city.

"This project is about breaking new ground," said Charley Royer, former mayor of Seattle and a contest judge. "Like the SR 99 tunneling machine, Bertha Knight Landes was one of a kind. It's only fitting that the machine bears her name."

Follow the SR 99 tunnel project

WSDOT says crews in Japan just finishing the one-of-a-kind machine featuring a 57.5-foot-diameter cutterhead. She'll be taken apart and loaded onto a ship that will arrive in Seattle next spring. She'll start tunneling from the west of Seattle's stadiums next summer.

Along with her name, Bertha is also getting her own identity and even a Twitter account.

"So nice to finally have an identity," @BerthaDigsSR99 tweeted Monday. "Maybe now the folks at the passport agency will take my application."

"The next generation of engineers is in our classrooms right now," Hammond said. "Letting students name the machine and providing an opportunity to follow Bertha on Twitter is a great way to engage them in this historic project, which is an engineering marvel."

Josh Kerns, MyNorthwest.com Reporter
Josh Kerns is co-host of KIRO Radio's Seattle Sounds (Saturday nights 7-8) and a digital content producer for MyNorthwest.com.
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Comments (2)


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  • sambra27 wrote...
    bidding
    December 10, 2012 8:14 pm
    Civil and structural projects involving this type of machinery almost always involve bidding. The subcontract to construct this probably went to the lowest bidder. Taxes would have happened anyway, but would have been higher if WSDOT had tasked a different company to do it. And yes that name is horribly predictable.
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  • hpygolkyone wrote...
    Huh?!........
    December 11, 2012 4:31 am
    It had to be female?.....WHY?

    The first thing I thought was, I'm sure this isn't the best they could come up with, but it was the name that was picked by Chris Gregoire and Paula Hammond.

    ..........Oy Vey

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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