Roads Scholar: First Look at Seattle's Gigantic Boring Machine

The world's biggest tunnel-boring machine, being assembled in Japan PHOTO CREDIT: WSDOT

Just purusing WSDOT's Flikr stream, as I'm wont to do on a sunny holiday-weekend Friday (!), when I came across this cool photo of Seattle's tunnel-boring machine, currently under construction in Japan. When it's finished, it will be the world's biggest, and will be used to dig the SR 99 tunnel beneath downtown Seattle. Expect that boring to start next summer; the tunnel to open in late 2015.