First TBM arrives at Vancouver’s Broadway City Hall

At 20m underground, the new station will be the deepest station constructed for the Broadway Subway Project, allowing the new tunnels to travel underneath the existing Canada Line. It will also be the busiest and largest station on the Millennium Line SkyTrain extension.

TBM Elsie arrived at Mount Pleasant Station in late January and began tunnelling toward the future Broadway-City Hall Station on March 4.

It will now undergo scheduled maintenance on the cutterhead after excavating more than 1,300m of tunnel and installing more than 900 concrete tunnel liner rings. It will then be relocated to the west side of the station to continue tunnelling. The next stop will be the future Oak-VGH Station, passing the halfway point in tunnelling toward the future Arbutus Station terminus.

The Broadway Subway Project Corporation, an Acciona Ghella joint venture, will relaunch the second Herrenknecht TBM – Phyllis – from Mount Pleasant Station this week. Phyllis is expected to break through at Broadway-City Hall this spring.

Traffic decks and special pedestrian bridges have been installed in the station blocks to ensure Broadway, a major east-west road in the city, remains open during construction.

The Broadway Subway Project will extend the Millennium Line 5.7km from VCC-Clark Station to West Broadway and Arbutus Street. The journey from VCC-Clark to Arbutus Station will take 11 minutes, saving the average transit commuter almost 30 minutes a day and relieving congestion along Broadway.