SEATTLE -- With a cloud of dust, Bertha -- Seattle's tunnel boring machine -- reached the end of her journey Tuesday morning.

Bertha, the machine digging a 1.75 mile tunnel under Seattle to replace a waterfront bridge with an underground roadway, had just 30 feet of mining left at the beginning of the day Tuesday.

Mining started around 8 a.m. Three hours later, Seattle Tunnel Partners said there was less than a foot of mining left. At that point, Bertha was moving at a rate of 5 mm per minute.

Dust obscured the view of Bertha's final stretch, but you could hear pieces of concrete falling as the machine broke through a five-foot concrete wall.

At 11:30 a.m., Bertha tweeted that the cutterhead had broken through and was visible.

Crews will break down the boring machine as others prepare the inside of the tunnel to handle double-decker lanes of highway that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake.

The $3.1 billion tunnel project is scheduled to open in 2019, four years behind schedule. The original completion date was the fall of 2015.

Opponents of the project continue to be skeptics about whether it will serve its purpose. </s> It's official - Bertha has broken through!

Seattle's tunnel boring machine that's been digging beneath the city for the State Route 99 tunnel reached the end of its 1.75-mile journey Tuesday, nearly four years after it embarked on the job.

Just before 10 a.m., water, dirt and a plume of dust or smoke came from the wall inside the State Route 99 tunnel pit, indicating Bertha was a foot within the wall. About an hour and a half later, Bertha emerged from the earth.

Bertha, the machine digging the State Route 99 tunnel, completed the 9,270 foot journey that she began July 2013.

The machine’s cutter head stopped just short of the disassembly pit Monday, drilling the final 30 feet Tuesday morning.

The tunnel still has awhile to go before it will open to the public. Crews need to finish the double-decker lanes and other infrastructure.

The tunnel project was not always a smooth journey. From a sinkhole that shut down operations for months to cost overruns that climbed to nearly $500 million, the project caused some headaches.

Related: Bertha: How we got here and beyond

However, Bertha finished the journey without any major hiccups since digging resumed in December 2015. </s> SEATTLE (AP) — The world’s largest tunnel-boring machine broke through a concrete wall beneath Seattle on Tuesday to reach the end of its long, troubled journey, a milestone in a multibillion-dollar project to replace an aging highway hugging the city’s waterfront.

Critics of the effort to build an underground roadway called it an overpriced endeavor that would collapse under the weight of its ambition and mounting costs. For a while, they looked to be right as the machine, known as Bertha, broke down soon after it started drilling in 2013 and didn’t crank up again until last year.

Bertha has finally capped its 1.75-mile (3-kilometer) journey, which the state Transportation Department and some media live-streamed online. Social media users posted memes about the time it took to reach this moment, when the giant machine cut through the final pieces of concrete in a 5-foot wall, filling the air with dust.

Crews will break down Bertha as others prepare the inside of the tunnel to handle double-decker lanes of an underground highway that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake. The $3.1 billion tunnel is set to open in 2019, four years behind schedule. The original completion date was fall 2015.

Proponents say the tunnel will allow Seattle to open up its waterfront along Puget Sound, which they say has been artificially walled off by the viaduct since it was built in the 1950s. Some conservative lawmakers slammed it as an expensive vanity project, and environmentalists objected to building another highway in Seattle.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that he was proud of the work and that this was “a moment to reflect on the incredible level of innovation and skill needed to get to this point.”

Republican state Sen. Michael Baumgartner of Spokane, a member of the Transportation Committee, called the project “a tragedy of errors.”

“Only in bonkers, leftist Seattle would an absurdly stupid project that’s massively behind schedule and over cost, would finishing be considered a success,” he told The Associated Press.

Bertha had only drilled about 1,000 feet (305 meters) of its 9,270-foot (2,826-meter) trek when it hit a steel pipe and ground to halt in December 2013. Crews spent much of 2014 digging a pit to reach the machine so it could be pulled out and repaired.

The removal of water near the pit sparked concerns about the ground in the area settling and posing a danger to pipes, buildings and roadways. Some businesses reported cracked walls, and monitors detected ground movement near the pit.

Officials ultimately decided the movement stemmed from activity in the pit and natural causes. After being shut down for more than two years for repairs, Bertha began digging again in 2016.

Officials also expressed concerns when a barge carrying excavated soil began to tip and dropped material into the water. The spill posed a hazard to the tunnel workers and the public.

The courts will decide who will pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars of cost overruns and delays.

Seattle Tunnel Partners and its insurance companies sued in 2015, claiming the state was at fault for Bertha’s breakdown. The Department of Transportation responded with its own lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages because of the delays caused by the breakdown. </s> Water, dirt, and a plume of smoke can be seen coming from the exit point for Bertha, the Seattle tunnel boring machine that has been digging beneath the city for nearly four years.

It's not clear how long we'll have to wait before the cutter head emerges.

Just before 10 a.m., the water and smoke could be seen from the State Route 99 tunnel pit.

Bertha, the machine digging the State Route 99 tunnel, completed the 9,270 foot journey that she began July 2013.

The machine’s cutter head stopped just short of the disassembly pit Monday, drilling the final 30 feet Tuesday morning.

The tunnel still has awhile to go before it will open to the public. Crews need to finish the double-decker lanes and other infrastructure.

The tunnel project was not always a smooth journey. From a sinkhole that shut down operations for months to cost overruns that climbed to nearly $500 million, the project caused some headaches.

Related: Bertha: How we got here and beyond

However, Bertha finished the journey without any major hiccups since digging resumed in December 2015. </s> After four years of moving — and sitting broken for a while — underneath downtown Seattle, the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine on Tuesday reached the end with much fanfare.

Q13 News streamed it live online and on Facebook and 2 million people watched the cutterhead break the final wall into the disassembly pit near Seattle Center.

It’s all for a double-decker highway that will go in the tunnel. Southbound lanes will be on top and northbound lanes on the bottom. Both will carry hundreds of thousands of drivers every day when the tunnel opens in early 2019.

Crews will have a lot of plumbing, electrical and mechanical features to work out, not to mention more than 8,000 tests to make sure the tunnel is safe for drivers. As crews get ready for that endeavor, hundreds on Tuesday paused for the historic moment and watched Bertha break through to its final destination.

During the process Bertha sounded like a whale at times, then a raging river.

The gushing water was the first sign of Bertha’s birth into daylight. Chunks of concrete started to rain down, and the people who worked for years for the monumental moment tried not to blink.

“It’s a unique experience,” the Washington State Department of Transportation's Roger Millar said.

The haze of concrete dust made it hard to see. The anticipation, nevertheless, built up, then finally a tunnel the size of 6 stories opened up.

“Machine was right on alignment, broke through at the exact spot it was supposed to,” said Chris Dixon, with the contractor Seattle Tunnel Partners.

The delayed journey and cost overruns took a backseat during the celebration.

“The only stronger is King Kong; now we got ourselves a tunnel,” Gov. Jay Inslee said.

“Thank you Bertha, it’s time for the next stage,” Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said.

The next phase entails months of taking apart the largest tunnel-boring machine in the world. Some parts will be recycled and others shipped back to the machine’s creator in Japan.

“We have to clean all the debris that you see,” Dixon said.

Then the work begins on finalizing the tunnel that will replace the elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct for good. </s> Bertha has broken through. After nearly four years underground, Seattle’s beleaguered boring behemoth clawed its way into daylight yesterday, leaving a 1.7-mile tunnel behind it. And now that its job is done, workers can at last move an aging, potentially dangerous stretch of elevated highway below the surface, and build a new public space on Seattle’s waterfront in its place.

The tunneling machine, named for former Seattle mayor Bertha Knight Landes, boasts a 57-foot diameter and measures 325 feet long. After dropping into a pit in July 2013, it started digging the tunnel that will hold the replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated highway that was partly demolished after being damaged by a 2001 earthquake.

Bertha's job was supposed to take two and a half years, but in December 2013, disaster struck: After just 1,000 feet of work, temperature spikes inside the machine set alarm bells ringing, and Bertha had to stop. The contractor says an 8-inch steel well casing, a bit of pipe, basically, fouled the cutting tools and damaged the blades at the front. (Washington State disagrees on the cause; lawyers are fighting it out.)

Bertha the tunneling machine broke through a new concrete wall into a disassembly pit. At first it was hard to see the machine's arrival through clouds of dust. Workers clamoured to get a shot of the exact moment Bertha emerged. Now crews will remove the metal support braces so that Bertha can move all the way into the pit. Engineers will cut the 6,100 ton machine into pieces no more than 20 tonnes in weight, so that they can be removed on trucks. A worker looking out through Bertha's blades gives an idea of the scale of the earth chewing machine.

Eventually engineers determined that seals on the main bearing needed replacing1, and the most efficient thing to do was to dig down 120 feet to where Bertha was stuck, pull the cutting head up to the surface, and do repairs on site. That took technicians two years, but they finally sent Bertha on its way again in December 2015. And on Tuesday, it finally gnawed through the concrete wall of a newly constructed, 90 feet deep, ‘disassembly pit’.

Now, workers will cut 7,982-ton Bertha into about hundreds of 20-ton pieces, so they can crane them out and truck them away. They’ll decide if parts can be salvaged for use on other projects, or if they should be recycled. No surprise, that'll take several months. (Dismemberment beats being buried alive: After a 200-ton tunneling machine finished its work under New York City, workers abandoned it instead of hauling it back up.)

This breakthrough is just the start. Now construction crews have to finish a double deck highway inside the 60-foot diameter tube, complete with lighting, ventilation, and fire detection systems. Washington State's Department of Transportation says inspectors will test more than 8,500 components over the next two years, before signing off and letting traffic through.

Bertha's journey has been a slow one, even when compared to other boring projects. London carved 23 miles of tunnels under the city for a new Crossrail train in just three years, using eight machines. And serial entrepreneur and traffic hater, Elon Musk says he can find a better way to build tunnels, which he sees as a way to increase road capacity. He is digging a test trench outside the HQ of his company SpaceX in Los Angeles, and while he admits "We have no idea what we're doing," he says he hopes to increase the speed of tunneling by 500 to 1,000 percent. Eventually he’d like to see a network of tunnels up to 30 layers deep under cities, with traffic whizzing in three dimensions, instead of just two on the surface.

Musk may want to look at Seattle for a reality check on the difficulties of working underground. The $2 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement in Seattle is now slated to open in early 2019, fully three years behind schedule. But hey, at least there’s now light at the end of the tunnel.

1Story updated at 3.15p EST 04/07/17 with details on the damage and repair. </s> SEATTLE — A tunnel-boring machine has broken through a concrete wall beneath Seattle in a troubled multibillion-dollar project to replace a waterfront highway with an underground roadway.

The machine, known as Bertha, reached the end of a 1.75-mile journey Tuesday, years behind schedule. The machine broke down soon after it started drilling in 2013 and didn't crank up again until last year.

Crews will prepare the inside of the tunnel to handle double-decker lanes of highway that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake.

The $3.1 billion tunnel is scheduled to open in 2019. It was supposed to be done in 2015.

Tunnel proponents say it will allow Seattle to open up its waterfront along Puget Sound, which they say has been artificially walled off by the viaduct. Critics slammed it as an expensive vanity project. </s> The world's largest tunnel-boring machine which is building a multi-billion dollar underground highway beneath Seattle has finally completed its missions - three years later than planned.

Pictures show the machine, known as Bertha, breaking through a concrete wall as it reached the end of its troubled journey - a milestone in the project to replace an aging road hugging the city's waterfront.

Critics of the effort to build the underground roadway called it an overpriced endeavor that would collapse under the weight of its ambition and mounting costs.

For a while, they looked to be right as the machine, known as Bertha, broke down soon after it started drilling in 2013 and didn't crank up again until last year.

But the boring device has finally capped its 1.75-mile journey, which the state Transportation Department and some media live-streamed online.

Social media users posted memes about the time it took to reach this moment, when the giant machine cut through the final pieces of concrete in a 5ft wall, filling the air with dust.

'Today is a major construction milestone in our plan to reclaim Seattle's waterfront,' Mayor Ed Murray said. 'We will build a waterfront for pedestrians, transit and sensible car trips without a freeway wall casting a shadow over our vision of a well-connected 21st century city.'

Crews will break down Bertha as others prepare the inside of the tunnel to handle double-decker lanes of a $3.1 billion underground highway project that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake. The tunnel is set to open in 2019, three years behind schedule.

Proponents say the viaduct will no longer wall off Puget Sound. Some conservative lawmakers slammed the project as an expensive vanity project, and environmentalists objected to building another highway in Seattle.

'This is a historic moment in our state's transportation history,' said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, adding that it was a time 'to reflect on the incredible level of innovation and skill needed to get to this point.'

Republican state Sen. Michael Baumgartner of Spokane, a member of the Transportation Committee, called the project 'a tragedy of errors.'

'Only in bonkers, leftist Seattle would an absurdly stupid project that's massively behind schedule and over cost, would finishing be considered a success,' he told The Associated Press.

Bertha had only drilled about 1,000 ft of its 9,270 ft trek when it hit a steel pipe and ground to halt in December 2013.

Crews dug a pit to reach the machine so it could be pulled out and repaired. Exactly what caused Bertha to stop drilling will be the subject of litigation between the state and the contractor.

The removal of water near the pit sparked concerns about the ground in the area settling and posing a danger to pipes, buildings and roadways. Some businesses reported cracked walls, and monitors detected ground movement near the pit.

Officials ultimately decided the movement stemmed from activity in the pit and natural causes. After being shut down for more than two years for repairs, Bertha began digging again in 2015.

Officials also expressed concern when a barge carrying excavated soil began to tip and dropped material into the water. The spill posed a hazard to tunnel workers and the public.

The courts will decide who will pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars of cost overruns and delays.

Seattle Tunnel Partners and its insurance companies sued in 2015, claiming the state was at fault for Bertha's breakdown.

The Department of Transportation responded with its own lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages because of the delays caused by the breakdown. </s> It's official - Bertha has broken through!

Seattle's tunnel boring machine that's been digging beneath the city for the State Route 99 tunnel reached the end of its 1.75-mile journey Tuesday, nearly four years after it embarked on the job.

Just before 10 a.m., Bertha pierced the cement wall of the tunnel, sending water, dirt and a plume of dust into the disassembly pit. About an hour and a half later, Bertha's cutterhead emerged from the earth.

The event marks the end of Bertha's 9,270 foot journey that she began July 2013. But the tunnel still has awhile to go before it will open to the public. Crews need to finish the double-decker lanes and other infrastructure.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says completing a tunnel that will serve as an underground highway was "a major construction milestone in our plan to reclaim Seattle's waterfront." He added the city is one step closer to taking down the viaduct for "our vision of a well-connected 21st century city" serving "pedestrians, transit and sensible car trips."

Washington Governor Jay Inslee says the breakthrough is "a historic moment in our state's transportation history." But critics call it an expensive vanity project, and environmentalists have objected to building another highway in Seattle.

The tunnel project was not always a smooth journey. From a sinkhole that shut down operations for months to cost overruns that climbed to nearly $500 million, the project caused some headaches.

Related: Bertha: How we got here and beyond

However, Bertha finished the journey without any major hiccups since digging resumed in December 2015.

As for tolls for the new tunnel, the state transportation commission says it's too soon to know the price.

Former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, who was a driving force to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel, said she always believed it was the right decision.

"Even during the worst of times, I never lost faith," Gregoire told KING 5. "That doesn't say I wasn't praying it would happen, but I've always been optimistic it was going to get done."

Gregoire believes the tunnel had to be built and points to studies that the viaduct likely wouldn't survive another earthquake.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are working in Olympia on a bill to make Seattle pay for the cost overruns on the tunnel instead of the state of Washington.

Republican Representative Ed Orcutt says back when Seattle Mayor Ed Murray was in the legislature, he included language in the project, promising that Seattle property owners would pay for any overruns, either through a property or sales tax.

KING 5's Liza Javier, Allison Sundell and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bertha, once the world's largest tunnel boring machine, completes its 9,270-foot-long (2,830 m) tunnel under Seattle, Washington, after four years of digging and a lengthy delay near the beginning of the project.