One tunnel boring machine has made headway drilling a new 5,700-ft-long tube for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, part of a $756-million project to eliminatie a longstanding bottleneck by connecting parallel above-water segments constructed in 1995 to carry southbound traffic.
Maryland is taking emergency measures to alleviate extensive congestion resulting from deck replacement work on the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, which carries U.S. Routes 50 and 301 across the Chesapeake Bay.
With tunneling on a new one-mile tube for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel set to begin next year, project officials are readying plans for handling an estimated 500,000 cu yd of potentially tainted spoil to be produced by a 42-ft-dia tunnel-boring machine, currently under construction in Germany.
Under the design-build contract for the 5,700-ft-long Thimble Shoals tunnel parallel to the existing crossing in Virginia, construction would start in 2017.
