Evergreen Tunnel Boring starts today
Evergreen Tunnel Boring starts today
It’s an exciting day for all you Buzzer readers following the progress of the Evergreen Line development. Today the TransLink board chair, Marcella Szel, joined Premier Christy Clark and Honourable Minister Todd Stone to announce the start of Evergreen Line tunnel construction and to officially name the tunnel boring machine.
The machine has been dubbed “Alice”, after Alice Wilson, Canada’s first female geologist. Very appropriate timing, considering tomorrow is International Women’s Day. Alice will bore the Evergreen Line tunnel which will run east of Barnet Highway in Port Moody to south of Kemsley Avenue in Coquitlam.
Once the Evergreen Line is complete, B.C. will have the longest rapid transit network in Canada at 79km in length.
Welcome to the TransLink family Alice!
Author: Jiana Ling
boring*
Maybe it isn’t as exciting as the Evergreen Line construction pictures I’ve found (elsewhere – hey why can’t we see any of them here?) but at least it’s something.
Is Alice going to be shipped off as soon as this tunnel is finished or can we use the same TBM for another tunnel in the region?
@ Sheba
These machines are far and few across the world and their availability is scheduled well ahead of time. It is likely that Alice already has another gig in some other part of the world lined up after she’s finished building our tunnel. We can’t really just hang onto her for another tunnel after she’s done here… Another major infrastructure project across the world would be adversely impacted!
A well coordinated series of construction projects could potentially arrange it so that the same machine is used within the region and does not have to travel as far, but that’s not the case here.
I know… it would have been nice to see the Millennium/Evergreen Line extended out to Cambie at the very least.
But alas, this region can’t ever agree on anything!
Dennis and Sheba: The Ministry has some great pics. It sounds like you’ve already seen them, but for the rest of us – http://tranbc.ca/?s=evergreen and a great Flickr page as well – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/. And don’t forget the cameras and other resources on the official Evergreen page – http://www.evergreenline.gov.bc.ca/.
A couple more links – Photos from the event – http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcgovphotos
Evergreen Line construction photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tranbc/sets/72157632226282626/
“boring*” was in reference to the “boaring” typo in the original title of this post (evidenced by the URL of the post); the content is definitely not boring :) Looks like the typo was subsequently fixed.