Construction of the West Gate Tunnel is well underway, with tunnel boring machine (TBM) Bella digging the 4km westbound tunnel on the West Gate Tunnel Project.
She will be joined shortly by TBM Vida on the 2.8km inbound tunnel. The TBMs will build the new twin tunnels between the Maribyrnong River and the West Gate Freeway, providing a vital alternative to the West Gate Bridge. The project will create quicker and safer journeys and remove over 9,000 trucks a day from streets in the inner west.
Here’s some quick facts about our 2 TBMs:
- Bella and Vida are currently the largest TBMs in the southern hemisphere.
- They weigh in at a hefty 4000 tonnes and are 90m long.
- They’re 15.6m high – that’s almost as big as Flinders Street station.
- The cutterhead alone weighs 450 tonnes (about 9 Melbourne trams).
- The cutterhead features 96 cutting tools and will rotate up to twice per minute during normal tunnelling operation and up to 3 times per minute when cutting through the hard basalt rock section and through the “bluestone” that Melbourne’s geology is famous for.
- Bella and Vida will excavate 1.5 million cubic metres of rock and soil from the tunnel.
- The TBMs will be running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, boring up to 9m a day.
TBM Bella is named after Bella Guerin, the first the first woman to graduate from a university in Australia in 1883. TBM Vida is named after Vida Goldstein, a ground-breaking campaigner for women’s rights, establishing the right for women to vote and stand for elections.
Learn more about our TBMs.
