MUNI Bluelight Emergency Telephone Replacement Project
San Francisco
Best Project 

Owner: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority
Lead Design Firm: HNTB and B&C Joint Venture and YEI Engineers Inc.
General Contractor: Shimmick Construction Co.

The MUNI Bluelight project installed a new emergency telephone system inside 10 stations and seven miles of tunnel track in San Francisco. The installation could not interfere with existing emergency phones, and all work was done during night shifts and specific shutdown periods.

The tunnel work was performed from two scissor-lift platform hi-rail trucks custom-designed for this project. These trucks allowed workers to install concrete anchors on tunnel walls directly from the hi-rail vehicle. Crews also used a drill press machine that could drill two holes at once. This machine took the stress off the workers, and the machine took all the wear from drilling.

Workers installed the power and communication cables by loading the reels in the hi-rail vehicle so multiple cables could be installed at once. Despite the grueling schedules and complexity of the $14-million project, the telephone system was successfully installed with zero safety incidents.

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