CAPE CHARLES, Va. (WAVY) — The tunnel boring machine known as Chessie broke through the receiving pit on Two Island at the Thimble Shoal Channel at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Monday, the CBBT said.
It’s a big milestone for the tunnel boring machine to reach its end destination, and the CBBT said that once the temporary bracing struts and steel beam are taken out of the receiving wall, Chess will finish its final hours of mining
The next step is for the road to be built inside the tunnel and put into place the electrical and mechanical systems and build the support buildings, the CBBT said, and when those things are finished, the new tunnel will carry two lanes of southbound CBBT traffic, and the existing tunnel will carry two northbound lanes of traffic.
Current projections have the project beingfinished in early 2028.
The mining for the two-lane, approximately one-mile long tunnel started in February 2023. Three months later, the tunnel boring machinestruck an obstruction that was later determined to be a large ship’s anchor that was made in England at the turn of the 20th century.
The uncertainty of construction. An anchor! Wild!
The tunnel boring machine used for the CBBT project was designed and built by Herrenknecht of Germany and has a cutterhead that measures 43 feet in diameter and an overall length of 308 feet. The name of the tunnel boring machine, Chessie, came from then-sixth grader Grace Bentley of Nandua Middle School.
Chessie removed about 500,000 cubic yards of soil and installed about 10,000, 10-ton concrete segments
Just love these heavy civil projects. Man versus nature. Molding and shaping the world to make it more convenient for humans to move around and about. Kudos to all the engineers involved in this fantastic project!