Breakthrough! TBM Reaches Karangahape
Despite all the curve balls, complications and challenges Covid-19 keeps throwing City Rail Link’s way, the project celebrated a huge milestone in mid-October – 32 metres below ground.
Our powerful tunnel boring machine (TBM), Dame Whina Cooper, broke through into the huge underground cavern of what will be Karangahape Station after its 860-metre-long journey from Mt Eden. This signifies the completion of a quarter of its total underground journey for the City Rail Link.
Under the current Alert Level 3 Covid-19 conditions, only a handful of workers were present as the TBM breached the station cavern. The TBM’s operators marked their arrival with a symbolic gift to Karangahape Station workers - a hard hat representing the Link Alliance’s commitment to achieve industry-leading standards in health, safety, and wellbeing. The hard hat bears Dame Whina Cooper’s portrait.
City Rail Link Ltd Chief Executive, Dr Sean Sweeney, described the breakthrough as positive, exciting, and significant.
“Aucklanders can’t see it, but far below their streets a railway that is going to change their lives for the good is rapidly starting to take shape,” he said.
New Zealand’s recent five-week-long Covid-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown delayed the TBM’s planned September breakthrough. Our main contractor, the Link Alliance, continued to operate the TBM during the lockdown, however well below full capacity, to stop earth settling around it. Tunnelling accelerated when Auckland’s lockdown restrictions were eased, allowing the TBM to arrive way ahead of its rescheduled deadline of November - a bonus for the project’s construction timetable.
“Great collaboration, planning and old-fashioned hard labour from all our teams below and above ground helped us regain some of that momentum lost to the lockdown,” said Francois Dudouit, Project Director for the Link Alliance.
A lot of hard mahi is now underway at Karangahape.
The entire TBM - all 130 metres of it - is being “pushed” 223-metres to the northern end of the station cavern and readied for the next stage of its journey, to Aotea Station in Auckland’s midtown. Its planned arrival is early in the new year where it will connect with the tunnels already built from Britomart and under the lower end of Albert Street.