Building Seattle's State Route 99 Supertunnel, Journey from Light to Light

Whenever I see pictures of the Egyptian pyramids I am struck by their massive size (built with stone blocks that weighed like a couple of cars) and I wonder how the heck they were built without machines. Wikipedia says the construction method is “the controversial subject of many hypotheses”. They don’t know.Not so for the Seattle Supertunnel, a ~50+’ diameter by 1.7-mile-long, freeway sized tunnel under Seattle’s downtown waterfront. Thanks to tunnel’s official photographer and author, Catherine Bassetti, the details of how the tunnel was designed and built are beautifully photographed and described in this informative and entertaining large book.For me there were two major parts of this book. The central character in the book is “Big Bertha” the tunnel boring machine (I am a techie). The pictures (I especially like the full-page ones), the engineering drawings, and the story line of its 1+ year of construction in Japan and several years tunnel drilling in Seattle are the main story. There are descriptions of how the Supertunnel was dug and the walls assembled. Learn how the walls segments were designed to survive earthquakes stronger than the one that lead to the creation of the tunnel by destroying the Alkan Way Viaduct freeway that the Supertunnel replaced.The second major part of the book is about the people that drilled the tunnel using Big Bertha.The author has a great eye for selecting and describing an example subset of those people. She uses 1-2-page “Spotlight on The Job” segments to let you get to know what some of the workers/jobs were like and also to peek into their lives away from work. You get to know a little about their families, their hobbies, and their story of how they built the tunnel, and how building the tunnel affected them.It’s a story of human intellect in the design and our species incredible ability to work cooperatively in the execution. I suppose the same could be said for many/most things of modern (post Egyptian?) human history. And like most things, the devil is in the details, and in this case, the details are included Bassetti’s beautiful book.

Seattle’s State Route 99 traffic tunnel, stretching for two miles under the city’s bustling center, is a marvel. Equal to its subject, Supertunnel: Journey from Light to Light, is a marvelous book. Lucky for us a crack professional was hired as the site photographer to document the years long building of the tunnel. The stunning photographs and first-hand accounts of the tunnel’s origin, construction and completion tell the story of a team effort of epic proportions from an outlandish concept to the inauguration and opening. Imagine replacing the antiquated, earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct with a deep-bore tunnel five stories high and a hundred-plus feet underground, all while Pikes Street Market, restaurants, retailers and day-to-day traffic proceeded without interruption! Supertunnel tells a lively, gripping story through dazzling pictures and inspiring oral history. We non-engineers gain an appreciation for what goes into infrastructure we take for granted. For starters, work went on 24/7 running three shifts of masons, plasterers, pavers, carpenters, drivers, ironworkers, operating engineers and other skilled laborers. Engineers and transportation geeks will lap up mining machine details describing thrust rams, cutter head spokes, ribbon-type screws, trailing ‘cans’ and segment erectors. Among the women and men responsible for this mammoth undertaking the crowning glory is Bertha, the largest tunnel boring machine ever built, named for Seattle’s first female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes. Hail to Bertha whose relatively short life ended with the tunnel’s completion. I recommend that you buy this book (packed in a handsome, gift-ready box, unlike most Amazon deliveries). When you get your copy, start on page 176, Behind the Camera, and meet Catherine Bassetti the site photographer. As you then go through the book from the beginning, let her “brass you in” (p. 35) and take you for a tour of a lifetime through one of the world’s wonders.

Great book on documenting the building of Seattle's State Route 99 " Super Tunnel". I have been involved with photographing tunneling underground and enjoyed seeing one of the world's largest Tunnel Boring Machine (57.5' dia.) that Catherine has documented during the construction. Enjoyed the interviews in the book with the construction workers & engineers that built this Super Tunnel. Looking forward to you next photographic project Catherine.

This is a beautifully photographed book about the building of the Seattle Supertunnel, the largest diameter soft earth tunnel in the world. The photographs and accompanying text, highlighting not only the science and engineering of the dig by Bertha but many of the men and women working for years inside the tunnel, makes this book a riveting read..

"Supertunnel" is an astounding photographic record of a mammoth six-year civic works project -- boring a four lane, two mile, double-decker tunnel beneath the heart of downtown Seattle. Catherine Bassetti's photos -- taken from every conceivable angle and distance -- document not only the complexity of the project, but also the beauty of the engineering and the scale of the day-to-day challenges and achievements among the managers, skilled workers, tradespersons, engineers, and laborers. In "Supertunnel", dozens of them contribute stories about their days on the project, with each story enhanced by Bassetti's up-close shots of a moment on the job. "Skyscraper" by Karl Sabbagh, "The Great Bridge" by David McCullough, and "On High Steel", by Mike Cherry have had for years a favored spot on my bookshelves. Now I can add a fourth.