West Gate Tunnel road decks near completion
8 August 2023More than 4.5km of road deck has been installed across the West Gate Tunnel project’s twin tunnels in Australia.
A specialist machine is lifting and installing more than 2,000 giant 24-tonne concrete segments to create the future road surface.
CPB Contractors and John Holland JV completed tunnelling in May and the two Herrenknecht EPBMs are now being removed. A 400-tonne crane is moving into position to lift the final pieces of TBM Bella’s 15.6m wide cutterhead out of the outbound portal, and the dismantling of TBM Vida is nearly complete.
Work is also under way to construct the tunnel entries and exits and prepare for the installation of the timber net structures.
Bella and Vida were the largest TBMs in the Southern Hemisphere – each with a 15.6m diameter, 90m long and weighing 4,000 tonnes.
West Gate is the first Australian tunnel to be constructed with an elevated road surface, providing another tunnel underneath for maintenance of critical services, ventilation and emergency access.
Due to open in late 2025, it is designed to ease congestion on the West Gate Freeway and West Gate Bridge, and reduce the number of trucks on residential streets.
