Connecting the shorelines of Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, crews immersed 11 elements, each made of 16,000t of reinforced concrete, starting in October 2014 and placing the final one last July.
The two-lane road tunnel is part of the largest design build project in the Hampton Roads region’s history. Hampton Roads refers to the area in the middle of the Eastern seaboard where the James, Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers pour into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Some 1.6 million people live in the region and rely on Virginia’s existing Midtown Tunnel, which carries more than one million vehicles per month.
