- ACCIONA and joint venture partner, Ghella, have welcomed the first tunnel boring machine to the future Broadway-City Hall Station.
Elsie marked another important milestone for the Broadway Subway Project on Friday when she safely broke through into the excavation site of the future Broadway-City Hall Station.
With this feat, Elsie, the first of two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to launch on the project last fall, has now reached what will be the busiest and largest station on the Millennium Line SkyTrain extension.
Broadway-City Hall will also be the deepest station on the project at more than 20 metres underground, allowing the new twin tunnels to be built below the existing Canada Line. It will feature a convenient underground connection for passengers to transfer between the north-south Canada Line and the east-west Millennium Line.
Elsie will now undergo maintenance on her cutterhead after excavating more than 1,300 metres of tunnel and installing more than 900 concrete tunnel liner rings. Her next stop will be at the future Oak-VGH Station, passing the halfway point in tunnelling towards the future Arbutus Station terminus.
Phyllis, the project’s second TBM, will continue her journey towards Broadway-City Hall Station today and is expected to make her next breakthrough later this spring.
With the departure of both TBMs from Mount Pleasant Station and the completion of the station foundation, crews will now turn their focus to building the station’s interior walls.
While people travel above, work on the five new SkyTrain stations continues below ground. The new line is being tunneled underground with traffic decks and special pedestrian bridges installed in the station blocks, ensuring Broadway is kept open and access is maintained to businesses, health services and residences throughout construction.
Concrete pours to complete the station foundation are ongoing at Broadway-City Hall and set to begin at the remaining stations along Broadway. At the east end of the project, more than half of the concrete girders connecting the 21 columns between VCC-Clark Station and the future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station have been installed.
The Broadway Subway Project will extend the Millennium Line 5.7 kilometres from VCC-Clark Station to West Broadway and Arbutus Street, providing people with fast, convenient SkyTrain service along the Broadway corridor. The corridor is home to B.C.’s second-largest jobs centre, world-class health-care services, an emerging innovation and research hub, and growing residential communities.
Photos of the TBMs and general construction images can be found here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/albums/72157706275278374