Two hard rock TBMs are due to excavate four tunnels on the East Side Access project in New York. Last month the cutterhead sections of the first machine were lowered into the mouth shaft for transport through a tunnel, below East River, to be assembled in the launch box below 63rd Street and 2nd Avenue. The 6.7m diameter TBMs, one being supplied by Seli but both Robbins machines originally, will bore a total length of 7.5km through the gneiss underlying the city. The project is being undertaken by New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and the contractor is Dragados, part of the ACS group, which won the US$428M tunnelling contract in mid-2006.
