The Hampton Road-Bridge Tunnel Expansion project (HRBT) is celebrating World Tunnel Day today with the opening of a project welcome centre.
The City of Norfolk’s former Visitors’ Centre in Ocean View has been transformed into a learning and community meeting space designed to encourage the public to learn more about the history of the HRBT and the nearly US$4bn expansion project under way.
Working with the US Navy which owns the property, and the City of Norfolk which holds a lease for the property, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), with 92% of project funding provided by the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission (HRTAC), will operate the centre as an educational and learning facility for the expansion project.
VDOT spent nearly a year refurbishing the site and two-storey building. It features a 3.5m-long model of TBM Mary, a model of the project’s slurry treatment plant, artifacts uncovered during project excavations, historic pictures of the tunnels past and present and a conference room.
Also showcased are tributes to NASA pioneers Mary Jackson and Katharine Johnson after whom the TBM and slurry plant are named.
One wall describes the contributions of HRTAC as the funding arm for HRBT Expansion and other regional projects under way throughout the VDOT Hampton Roads District, and video screens display tunnelling stories and detail local road projects.
The HRBT, being built by Hampton Roads Connector Partners (HRCP), a consortium of Dragados USA, Vinci, Flatiron Constructors, and Dodin Campenon Bernard, is Virginia’s first bored road tunnel.
