March 3, 2008

An excited crowd gathers as the boring machine breaks through at the future site of Canada Line’s Waterfront Station.

Infrastructure

Workers celebrate Canada Line’s bored-tunnel breakthrough

A critical phase of Canada Line construction was completed on Sunday, March 2, 2008 when the project’s 440-tonne tunnel boring machine (TBM) broke through the ground into the future site of Canada Line’s Waterfront Station. The breakthrough completes the second of two side-by-side bored tunnels from just south of False Creek to just north of Pender Street in downtown Vancouver.

With the completion of the second (inbound) tunnel, the 2nd Avenue tunnel boring worksite will be transformed so that construction of the Canada Line station can proceed. While some station work has already taken place, the worksite has been used primarily for tunnel boring operations.

Approximately 20,000 pre-fabricated concrete tunnel lining segments have been used to construct the 5 kilometres of tunnel walls. The tunnel is 5.3 metres in internal diameter and varies in depth between 10 and 30 metres.

The Canada Line rapid transit system will run fully separated from traffic between the transportation hub at Waterfront Centre in Vancouver, the heart of Richmond’s civic precinct, and Vancouver International Airport. With 16 stations, two bridges, approximately 19 km of tunnel and elevated guideway, parking and bus facilities, and transit capacity equivalent to 10 road lanes, the Canada Line will be an important new link in the regional transportation network.

InTransitBC is the company contracted to design, build, operate, maintain and partially finance the Line.

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