Welcome to the digital edition of the TunnelTalk Annual Review 2011 Each of the articles has been published first on www.TunnelTalk.com, the leading online magazine for the global underground construction industry. All the articles are hotlinked to the TunnelTalk online Archive allowing for direct, free access to the full coverage and a wealth of additional information. All advertisements are also hotlinked directly to the advertiser’s website. All featured videos are linked to the TunnelTalk YouTube channel. Digital issues of the Annual Review are available for purchase, allowing you to build a historic reference of the international tunnelling industry.
Annual Review
2011
How will 2011 be remembered? Will it be for the mergers and acquisitions within the industry; or the floods and natural disasters that devastated parts of the world, the east coast of Japan in particular? Will it be for the conferences and exhibitions that had the industry gathered and informed; or for the major contract awards, project breakthroughs, and technical developments that were achieved? Or will it be for the projects cancelled as part of public financing austerity? Through the year TunnelTalk has kept abreast of these stories, publishing the news and information on the website, highlighting the new editorial content on the free weekly email Alert to a growing database of readers, and updating the record on our RSS feed and network media accounts. In this second edition of the TunnelTalk Annual Review, the major events of 2011 are highlighted: the ones that punctuated the year internationally and chartered the progress of projects into 2012 and towards their completion. TunnelTalk is now into its fourth year of operation and is continuing to grow. Our team expanded in 2011 with new members Peter Kenyon, News Editor; Binda Punj, Advertisement Manager; and editorial contributors Armand van Wijck, Zheng Yan Long and Alex Kisiri, joining our regular reporters and staff. Our webmasters and programmers continue to keep the site current and progressive, presenting a wide range of web publishing possibilities, including expansion of our video and podcast broadcasting. The Annual Review is recognition of the efforts by all through 2011 and the programme for continuing the service into the coming years. During 2011, TunnelTalk attended twelve international conferences and exhibitions: from bC India in February, WTC in Helsinki in May, RETC in San Francisco in June, AFTES in Lyon in October, the Shanghai Symposium in November, to STUVA in Berlin in December, many of these as the event’s official web media partner. At each, the measure of developments in these different parts of the world and the interconnection between them was monitored and reported. Looking into 2012, we will meet the industry again at a similar set of conferences and events, and we look forward to continuing the task of keeping the industry informed and the news as current and immediate as only publishing on the web can achieve. This printed Annual Review publication is presented as a record of the year for the bookshelf. It is a reminder of what happened in 2011, of how the year impacted major projects, advanced further developments, and changed the shape of the industry. Visit the website - TunnelTalk.com - to learn of the latest industry news and the website’s Archive to research further details of the projects highlighted in this record of 2011. An Annual Review of TunnelTalk reporting for 2012 is already in the making. Contact us to become a part of the coverage.
Direct by Design Additional copies of the TunnelTalk 2011 Annual Review can be ordered on the website PUBLISHER & EDITOR: Shani Wallis DESIGN & PRODUCTION: Claire Hunt ADVERTISING: Binda Punj
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Copyright© TunnelTalk 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. All views expressed in this journal are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily the opinions of the publisher, neither do the publishers endorse any of the claims made in the articles or the advertisements. Printed by Buxton Press, UK.
Contents MEGA PROJECTS 5 Breakthrough ends challenging journey at Niagara 8 Kuala Lumpur concludes MRT Swiss Challenge 9 Hong Kong express to mainland China 12 Record-setting sea links open in China 13 China begins Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao sea link 16 Ireland drops €5.6 billion metro projects 17 Brenner Baseline connection: Let the works begin! 19 Inn Valley underground rail ready to open 20 Works begin on Austria’s Koralm rail link 21 Gotthard Baseline final breakthrough 22 Germany advances Stuttgard-21 23 New Zealand awards mega-TBM highway project 25 Second Avenue taking shape in New York 26 Programming for success on Crossrail 28 Political backing for Denmark-Germany subsea link 29 Seattle’s mega bored tunnel: the political story 31 California calls for high-speed rail collaborators PLANNED PROJECTS 32 Qatar drives forward with Doha Metro 32 New Zealand concedes proposed park route 33 Metro stays underground at Dulles Airport 33 Major upgrade plans for London’s Bank Station 34 Andes link a priority for Chile-Argentina-Brazil 34 Bypass repair for ageing New York aqueduct 35 Tunnels key to Colombia’s Mountain Highway PROJECT PROGRESS 36 Access drives in Chile for mighty mine operation 36 Seoul blasts a granite mountain highway pass 37 Brisbane completes Airport Link excavation 38 Central Subway awards in San Francisco 39 Transit tunneling advances in Toronto 40 Ottawa announces shortlist for LRT 40 Seattle mobilizes for sewer upgrade 41 Seattle LRT breakthroughs 42 Slurry TBMs ready to tackle New York soft ground 44 Columbus mobilizes the OARS project 45 Slim spread for Indianapolis CSO bids 46 Blue Plains Tunnel teams selected in DC 47 Hong Kong closing out West Drainage scheme 48 Excavation complete on Brightwater 49 New York harbor crossing under way 50 PPP to build new Midtown Tunnel in Virginia 50 Caldecott highway breakthrough 51 Rio de Janeiro prepares for international games 52 Miami Port Tunnel subsea drive begins 52 Lee Tunnel start for Thames River CSO control 53 Long wait over for Lake Mead TBM 54 India builds its first oil storage caverns 56 Strabag to build Toronto wastewater tunnel 57 Flooding control for Austin, Texas TBM RECORDER 58 Tracking the world’s mega-TBMs 60 Herrenknecht begins roll out of all Crossrail TBMs 61 NFM mega machines ready for Spain 61 Record-setting mountain drives in China 62 Robbins TBM rolls into hard rock history 62 First Robbins slurry TBM set for launch 63 Russia confirms order for largest TBM ever 64 A second mega-TBM river crossing for Nanjing 65 Hybrid EPBM at Sleemanabad 65 Triple TBM launch in Malaysia 66 Top-class TBMs for Azerbaijan Metro 66 Bangalore Metro TBMs inaugurated 67 Japanese machine for Seattle’s mega TBM drive DISCUSSION FORUM 68 In search of resilient cities 72 Short sighted Yucca Mountain shutdown 72 No-dig carbon reduction advantage 73 Fatal accidents and their consequences 74 China’s leading mega-project status 76 New Products and Innovations 82 Conferences and Exhibitions 87 Company News 91 Project Rehabilitation 93 Education and Training 95 Awards and Tributes
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