This week, Seattle’s Sound Transit will start drilling a $2 billion, three-mile light-rail tunnel to connect the University of Washington, Capitol Hill and Westlake Center. The first TBM will be christened today near UW’s Husky Stadium and will drill the southbound tunnel towards capital hill. Another TBM will start in parallel with the first in June, excavating the northbound tunnel. A third TBM will come into service later to excavate the first tube of the 1-mile route from Capital Hill to Westlake center. It will be extracted from a pit at the end of the bore, and returned to dig the other parallel tube. [Source: Seattle Times Newspaper via ASCE SmartBrief. Image: Alan Berner / The Seattle Times]
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Black & Veatch to design Chicago’s McCook Reservoir tunnel connection for USACE
Kansas City, Mo. (Aug. 5, 2009) – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has selected Black & Veatch as the design engineer for the McCook Reservoir Main Tunnel. The new tunnel will connect the future McCook Reservoir to Chicago’s Deep Tunnel system, which is aimed at improving water quality in area rivers and Lake Michigan and reducing flood risk for the city of Chicago and suburban communities. [Editor] Read on for the rest of the press release. Photo copyright Black and Veatch[/Editor] […]
Final three pieces of tunneling machine safely in the access pit
Feb. 7 Bertha update: Two factors contributed to tunnel stoppage
WSDOT released an update on February 7 with some conclusions regarding the blockage that has stopped the Alaska Way Viaduct Tunnel Boring Machine, Bertha’s progress since December 6. Now they don’t think it was necessarily the well casing after all.
They cite two factors that contributed to the blockage. First, the cutterhead was clogged with material. You can see an cool short video of a worker unclogging the cutterhead. Not terribly dramatic, but still cool. The second factor was increased temperatures inside the equipment. STP discovered damage to a seal that protects the machine’s main bearing. They are still determining how the repairs will be done.
If you want to follow the chronology of this issue, read below for summaries and links to previous updates from WSDOT. And Check out the videos too! [Source: WSDOT]