The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has announced that the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) Expansion Project will move forward as a TBM bored tunnel.
This week both competing teams, Hampton Roads Capacity Constructors – comprising of Fluor Inc. and Lane Construction Co. (lead contractors), Traylor and Bouygues (tunnel contractors) with Aecom (lead designer) – and Hampton Roads Connector Partners – comprising Dragados USA, Vinci, and Dodin Campenon Bernard (contractors) and HDR and Mott MacDonald (lead designers) – notified VDOT they have selected bored tunnel methods as the basis for their bid proposals, which will be submitted in late 2018.
“The selection of a bored tunnel means Hampton Roads will see some of the world’s most sophisticated tunnel technology at work. Once complete, this new crossing will greatly improve accessibility, transit, emergency evacuation, and military and goods movement along the I-64 corridor,” said VDOT Commissioner Stephen Brich.
Although the immersed-tube method has been used to construct all ten of Hampton Roads’ existing crossings – from the original Downtown Tunnel in 1952 to the new Midtown Tunnel in 2016 – the nearby Parallel Thimble Shoal Tunnel, currently under construction by Dragados USA and Schiavone Construction Co. (lead contractors) and Mott MacDonald (lead designer) at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, is also being built as a bored tunnel for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Commission.
The HRBT Expansion project will build a new bridge-tunnel adjacent to the existing HRBT and widen the four-lane segments of I-64 in Hampton and Norfolk to ease daily congestion between the Peninsula and South Hampton Roads. The project cost is estimated between $3.3 and $3.8 billion, with contract award expected in early 2019. The majority of project funding will be provided by the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission, with federal support and other public resources anticipated.
Find out more about the project at the upcoming Cutting Edge 2018 conference, in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 29 to 31 – organized in partnership by Tunnelling Journal and the UCA of SME – where VDOT will be presenting, see: http://www.ucaofsmecuttingedge.com/
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