The massive tunnel boring machine that will be used to dig the tunnels at Waterview is on a ship and will be here in a couple of weeks time and the NZTA want to give it a name. A month or so ago they went out to school children to come up with some names which have since been short-listed and now they want the public to decide. Here is the NZTAs press release.
The world’s 10th largest tunnelling boring machine (TBM) is now on its way to Auckland to construct the city’s Waterview Connection tunnels – one of New Zealand’s most important transport links since the opening of the Auckland Harbour Bridge more than 50 years ago.
The huge machine left Guangzhou in south-east China yesterday and is due to arrive at the Ports of Auckland’s Waitemata terminal in two and a half weeks.
Because of its size, the machine has been broken down into 97 separate pieces, including 20 containers of small parts. It will be reassembled at the bottom of a 30 metre-deep trench in Owairaka before boring the twin 2.4km-long Waterview motorway tunnels.
The NZ Transport Agency’s Auckland and Northland State Highways Manager, Tommy Parker, says the Waterview Connection will link the Northwestern (SH16) and Southwestern (SH20) motorways to complete the Western Ring Route, one of the Government’s economically strategic roads of national importance.
“At $1.4b, it’s the biggest single roading project ever undertaken by the NZTA and, as the critical part of the Western Ring Route, will remove Auckland’s reliance on a single motorway corridor – State Highway 1 and the harbour bridge.
“We are planning to have traffic using the tunnels by the end of 2016, which will give Auckland the connected and cohesive motorway system it needs to support growth in the region, and to improve links between our neighbours in Northland and in Waikato/Bay of Plenty. It will be as important a catalyst for change as the opening of the harbour bridge was in 1959,” says Mr Parker.
When the TBM has landed, it will be trucked to Owairaka over a 10 day period. Some of the 97 loads will be oversize, and Mr Parker says that they will be moved through city streets overnight to keep disruption to traffic to a minimum.
The heaviest of these will be the 260 tonne main drive for the cutting head, while the largest will be the TBM’s 8.5m diameter main bearing.
The machine will be reassembled inside the motorway trench, onto a launch cradle with its massive cutting head facing north – the direction it will go when tunnelling starts at the end of October.
The re-assembly will take a team of 30 approximately three months to complete and will be overseen by members of the Well-Connected Alliance team who spent several months in China involved in the manufacture and assembly of the machine alongside German manufacturer Herrenknecht. The TBM was factory tested in March before being stripped down and packed ready for its voyage to Auckland.
It is the largest machine ever built for use in Australasia, and has been designed specifically for the local geology. The cutting head and shield at the front are as high as a four-storey building.
The machine is 87m long, almost the length of a rugby field. It comprises a 14.4 diameter rotating cutting head attached to the front of a 12-metre long shield, followed by three back-up cars, or gantries, that house all the equipment needed to operate it, remove excavated material and put in place the precast concrete rings that will line the two tunnels.
“Delivery and assembly of the TBM will be complex – the start of a construction process that will lift the development of New Zealand’s transport infrastructure to a whole new level,” Mr Parker says.
The one vital element not packed away on the ship is a name. Tunnellers’ superstition demands that a TBM is given a woman’s name before tunnelling commences, People are about to be asked to choose from four possible names short listed from over 500 put forward by Auckland primary school children for the Waterview TBM. The whole country is invited to help choose the name by voting online at www.stuff.co.nz. The winning name will be announced on Friday July 12.
To be honest none of the names really jump out at me but if there is one you like, make sure you go and vote.
Processing...
Who cares? Its a tunnel boring machine that at the end of its job will most likely be scrapped. Stop wasting time and money. Someone gets paid to do this?
It’s a “political distraction”, to divert attention away from something else … maybe like we can’t really even afford to build this thing
Nigel.
Gerry
well, it is a big bore….
Looks like a Linda to me.
Wilberforce, of course.
+1
We have to call it that.
+2. Beat me to it.
Sideways Sushi.
It’s a TBM; it’s a machine; why, aside from inane spin, do they want to anthropomorphise it? But I like the fact that the last image, the one of the machine, butts up against the title of the earlier post: ‘The decline of car culture in the west’. An apt demonstration of how pathetic this whole, unnecessary, damaging, thing is!
Why not call it ‘my taxes’, or something to that effect?
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet-our-giant-tunnelling-machines
Maybe read this article which is rail based to understand why they name tunnel boring machines. Even though it’s clearly stated in the last paragraph of this article your bias against a road tunnel is telling.
To spell it out it’s about the workers who put their lives on the lines in what is one of the most dangerous jobs.Understand ???
“To spell it out it’s about the workers who put their lives on the lines in what is one of the most dangerous jobs.Understand ???”
Jeepers, way to derail an argument. For your information, working in the Waterview Tunnel is going to be a lot safer than working as an Auckland policeman, firefighter, or doctor*. If you need people to heroise, chose some who actually may deserve it. The Waterview folks running this thing are very likely to be skilled, quality people deserving respect, but they aren’t “in one of the most dangerous jobs”.
*Doctors apparently have a very high rate of people comitting violence against them, including murders (people can’t accept it when treatments don’t catch, I guess).
Auntie Helen!
Like!
I don’t think Auntie Helen was in favour of squandering money on roads to ruin. At least, not at the end of her term in office.
She was all in favour of this one.
Nora the borer. Holey moley.
I believe there was one recently in Christchurch (obviously much smaller) they called Dora the Borer
Out of the names shortlisted, I’d say Alice since they’re clearly going down the rabbit hole into la la land where roads are magical and free…
wormy
It’s huge, costly, spins in circles doing underground stuff, digging its own hole. Paint it black, give it a twitter account and it’s Kim Dotcom? (Cheap shot; I like KDC and am looking forward to the court cases)
“Crusher of Budgets”
“The Old Paradigm”
“FuelTaxy”
I think the Waterview connection should be called a “loop” as it definitely means that cars can go round and round in a loop.
well done Sir! just what I was thinking, so this thing should be called the “Westsern road LOOP hole making machine”
In London, on the Jubilee line extension, they had several TBMs, and school kids got to name them. Children at the posh school called theirs “St James the giant cruncher muncher machine” which never really caught on at all. Children at the more streetwise east end school called their two Sharon and Tracy.
Because?
Because they were really boring, and would go all the way….
Dora the Borer???
Doug.
You can only call it that once the project’s finished (and Douglas if the TBM doesn’t work at all).
OK, what about Digby then?