Sound Transit christens University Link tunnel boring machines at Husky Stadium

Let the tun­nel­ing begin!

This morn­ing, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Husky Sta­di­um, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tor Peter Rogoff, and local elect­ed offi­cials gath­ered to join Sound Tran­sit in chris­ten­ing the bor­ing machines that will exca­vate the tun­nels between the U‑District sta­tion at Husky Sta­di­um and the Capi­tol Hill sta­tion at Broad­way and Denny.

Uni­ver­si­ty Link, which is sched­uled to open in 2016, will extend light rail from down­town Seat­tle to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton via Capi­tol Hill.

Much of the fund­ing ($813 mil­lion of the total $1.9 bil­lion) is being pro­vid­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, in recog­ni­tion of the strong rid­er­ship poten­tial and the pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic impact that the project represents.

““The Uni­ver­si­ty Link project is already cre­at­ing qual­i­ty jobs here Seat­tle, and it is going to be great for local com­muters and the com­mu­ni­ty when it opens in 2016,” Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray said in a statement.

Inter­im UW Pres­i­dent Phyl­lis Wise added, “Today marks anoth­er mile­stone in the progress Sound Tran­sit is mak­ing in con­struct­ing our region’s light rail sys­tem. Each step brings us clos­er to the day when peo­ple through­out the region will be able to com­mute to the Uni­ver­si­ty by train. We are eager for the dig­ging to com­mence and look for­ward to the day when this sta­tion is com­plete and the trains begin to arrive.”

At today’s event, bot­tles of cham­pagne were placed on a line teth­ered to the two tun­nel bor­ing machines, and dropped against the side.

The machines, nick­named Togo and Bal­to, are already in place, hav­ing been low­ered by the con­trac­tors to the bot­tom of the hole that’s been exca­vat­ed to the imme­di­ate south­west of Husky Stadium.They will oper­ate between one hun­dred and three hun­dred feet under­ground on their jour­ney south.

Togo and Bal­to were man­u­fac­tured by Her­renknecht, a Ger­man firm spe­cial­iz­ing in tun­nel­ing. They each weigh around 503.4 met­ric tons, and were fab­ri­cat­ed near the Port of Taco­ma by Jesse Engi­neer­ing. Near­ly forty-five truck loads were need­ed to bring the TBMs and their trail­ing machin­ery to Montlake.

Each TBM is divid­ed into three parts. The for­ward shell (which hous­es the cut­ter­head and the main dri­ve), the sta­tion­ary shell (home to the propul­sion sys­tem and steer­ing) and the trail­ing shield, which con­tains the equip­ment need­ed to exca­vate the spoils and lay tun­nel segments.

Sound Tran­sit per­mit­ted myself and pho­tog­ra­phers from sev­er­al oth­er media out­lets to descend into the shaft so we could get a bet­ter view of the TBMs. They’re actu­al­ly hard to see from the sur­face; there’s a lot of gird­ers that obstruct the view.

Here’s a shot from the top:

And here’s the view from the bot­tom of the stairwell:

The machines will break into the soil lat­er this week. The cut­ter­heads will spin at between 0.1 to 2.5 rev­o­lu­tions per sec­ond as they exca­vate. Exca­va­tion will con­tin­ue until mid-2013, so the con­tract­ing teams will be tun­nel­ing for an esti­mat­ed two years. That’s actu­al­ly not such a long time­frame, con­sid­er­ing that the entire Uni­ver­si­ty Link exten­sion is under­ground (there are no at grade sections).

Sta­tion con­struc­tion is the next pri­or­i­ty. That’s expect­ed to con­tin­ue until mid-2015. Sys­tems test­ing will then fol­low, and the line will open in 2016.

The UW sta­tion is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed first, in ear­ly 2015. The Capi­tol Hill sta­tion should be done in late sum­mer or ear­ly autumn of that year.

It’s real­ly excit­ing to see Uni­ver­si­ty Link mov­ing for­ward. I remem­ber when the Emer­ald Mole was launched in 2006 to dig the Bea­con Hill tun­nels for Cen­tral Link. That was cer­tain­ly a momen­tous occa­sion, as today is.

As Sound Tran­sit’s plan­ners know, get­ting between down­town and the U‑District is present­ly very chal­leng­ing dur­ing rush hour, even for com­muters tak­ing a bus like the 545 Express. When it opens, Uni­ver­si­ty Link will offer a reli­able com­mute between these two vital neigh­bor­hoods, no mat­ter what the traf­fic or the weath­er are like. That day sim­ply can­not come soon enough.