The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project reached another milestone Wednesday as Mary, the affectionate name for the massive tunnel boring machine doing much of the heavy lifting, broke through onto the North Island, marking roughly the halfway point of her journey.
Mary will now have to be turned around to dig back toward Norfolk to create the second tunnel of what will be two new eastbound lanes on I-64, a process expected to take about five months. Once that’s complete, the Virginia Department of Transportation aims to make the return trip in about 11 months, slightly faster than the 51 weeks on the first tunnel. VDOT hopes to use the lessons from the first tunnel to expedite the second, according to Ryan Banas, VDOT project director.
Workers lined the receiving pit waiting for Mary’s emergence Wednesday morning. Water used in the boring process periodically spurted from small holes in the concrete headwall as the machine inched closer, and cracks slowly began to stretch across the area traced for the mouth of the tunnel.
After much anticipation – and roughly nine million man-hours of work since the start of the project, according to Banas — it happened all at once. One lower corner cracked open, unleashing a gush of water, then the other corner, then the whole circular cutout came down as one piece, landing with a thunderous boom.
The workers cheered as Mary stood over the rubble, her crafted cutterhead still spinning.
“What we just heard here today was the boom heard around Hampton Roads,” Banas said. “We’ve been waiting for almost 30 years to see this progress, since the early 90s, so just a halfway milestone for us here but the lessons learned, the pulling together as a team, proves that we can accomplish monumental things here in Hampton Roads.”
He added that the breakthrough went “about as well as we could’ve hoped.”
Mary started her journey in April 2023; since then, she has cleared 7,900 feet, about 750,000 cubic yards, of soil and has installed about 1,191 rings of the tunnel, according to VDOT. At its deepest point, the tunnel is 173 feet below the water’s surface.
The $3.9-plus billion project has faced substantial delays. In August 2022, The Virginian-Pilot reported that it was 11 months behind schedule for its original November 2025 completion date, and last month VDOT announced a revised substantial completion date of Feb. 26, 2027 and a final completion date of Aug. 27, 2027.
“We did have some construction challenges early on in the project, but I would say that the progress that we’ve made over the last year has been tremendous and I think [Mary’s breakthrough] is just an example of that progress that has been made,” said Christopher Hall, district engineer with VDOT. “It’s a very exciting day for the region.”
This project is the first bore tunnel in Virginia history and only the third in the United States, according to Banas. By the end, the project will widen I-64 from two to four lanes in each direction and construct two two-lane tunnels, doubling the road segment’s capacity.
Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com
