'Dame Whina Cooper', City Rail Link's tunnel boring machine, has broken through into the Karangahape Station after a 850 metre bore from Mt Eden. Excavation depth was 32 metres below ground.

This is what Auckland's City Rail Link has released on today:

Breakthrough!  Karangahape welcomes Dame Whina Cooper

Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) is today celebrating a mighty milestone with its powerful Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), Dame Whina Cooper, breaking through into the Karangahape Station construction site at the end of its 860-metre-long journey from Mt Eden.

CRL workers 32 metres below ground at Karangahape welcomed Dame Whina Cooper as the TBM breached a 100-millimetre-thick protective wall of concrete into the station cavern.

“Despite all the curve balls, complications and challenges covid keeps throwing our way, we’ve arrived – it’s a positive, exciting and significant arrival,” says City Rail Link Ltd’s Chief Executive,

Dr Sean Sweeney. “Aucklanders can’t see it, but far below their streets a railway that is goingto change their lives for the good is rapidly starting to take shape.”

Dr Sweeney says breakthrough success is tempered by covid’s continuing consequences forNew Zealand’s largest transport infrastructure project.

“It is very clear, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone, that the pandemic has had serious impacts onour project costs and construction timings” he says. “Assessments are underway now so thawe have a much clearer picture of the extent and depth of covid’s effects on us.”

New Zealand’s recent five-week-long covid lockdown delayed the TBM’s planned Septemberbreakthrough. CRL’s main contractor, the Link Alliance, continued to operate the TBM during the lockdown, well below full capacity, to stop earth settling around it. Tunnelling accelerated when lockdown restrictions eased.

“Great collaboration, planning and old-fashioned hard labour from all our teams below and above ground helped us regain some of that momentum lost to the lockdown – we’re at Karangahape in great shape well ahead of our rescheduled time in November --a real bonus,” says Link Alliance Project Director, Francois Dudouit. “The TBM was running sweetly at a ratehigher than planned during its drive under Spaghetti Junction on the motorway.”

Covid-related health and safety protocols curtailed larger breakthrough celebrations. The TBMoperators did mark their arrival with a symbolic gift for Karangahape Station workers - a hardhat representing the Link Alliance’s commitment to achieve industry-leading standards in health, safety, and wellbeing. The hard hat bears Dame Whina Cooper’s portrait.

https://www.cityraillink.co.nz/media-releases-2021