Jay Inslee finally got fed up with the fiasco that is the Highway 99 tunnel project, ordering contractors to suspend drilling until they could figure out what caused a sinkhole to form earlier this week. According to the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), despite efforts to cover the hole, Bertha is sinking. The Seattle Times,
“The governor’s action marks a change in the state’s hands-off approach to construction. The $1.35 billion ‘design-build’ contract places job-site decisions and risk on the builders. However, the state Thursday invoked a contract clause that allows it to suspend work based on a ‘failure to correct conditions unsafe for Project personnel or the general public.’”
The latest halt will likely add to the more than $220 million in extra payments requested by tunnel contractors since mid-2013. Bertha just re-started in late December, after two years of delays due to multiple problems. Perhaps the most embarrassing of these occurred when Bertha initially broke down two years ago after hitting a pipe which WSDOT knew was in the tunnel path because, well, the agency placed it there.
Now the public is in a waiting game again, with the tunnel project’s actually completion date as murky as a water-filled sinkhole.
Surprise, surprise….now the Governor is an engineer…write the contracts to include penalties for non-performance instead of raping the public and then see what happens.
I said it before the project was approved and I said it when it broke down a few years ago and I will say it again now; “this project will be even a bigger clusterf*ck then the “Big Dig” was to Boston.
Dump this project and build a NEW Viaduct – the old one is beyond repair – and maintain the best driving and passenger view in Seattle.
I think the tax and spend green Governor should get his little heni over to the project and get his hands a little “brown” on the end of a pick and shovel. First he would learn what the term “work” is by getting his little paws in “real dirt” and second it might keep him from causing a few less problems for us “real” workers!
Come-on this was the most expensive plan to replace the viaduct and that’s why it was picked, and not because there was much better but less expensive ways to get this done. Traffic moving from 2 lanes both ways from the 3 & 4 lanes there is on the viaduct now. So who are the people who voted for this project which are now being paid off, under the table for their votes?
I guess I wasn’t supposed to bring this up or even ask that question.