The Virginia DOT’s $3.9 billion plans to expand the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel hit a new milestone as a tunnel boring machine broke through its final wall on the second tunnel after two years of work.
The HRBT Expansion is the largest highway construction project in Virginia’s history. It aims to ease congestion along a 10-mile corridor of Interstate 64 by widening the current four-lane configuration through two free general-purpose lanes, a full-time express lane and a part-time shoulder express lane in each direction. The project will also add twin, two-lane tunnels under the harbor from Hampton to Norfolk across the Chesapeake Bay.
State and federal officials gathered September 24 to commemorate the event as the tunnel boring machine, named Mary, broke into her receiving pit on the South Island.
For a video of TBM Mary’s final breakthrough, scroll to the end of this article.
Mary was launched in April 2023 and tunneled at a rate of 50 feet per day approximately 50 feet below the existing tunnels. She broke through the first 7,940-foot tunnel on the North Island in April 2024.
Mary was named by students at Saint Gregory the Great Catholic High School in Virginia Beach in 2020 after mathematician and NASA engineer Mary Jackson.
The $70 million, 430-foot TBM was manufactured in Germany by Herrenknecht. She was assembled on the HRBT’s South Island in a 65-foot pit over a period of six months.
The Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission will pay 92% of the total costs of the project, which was awarded to Hamton Roads Connector Partners, through the Hampton Roads Transportation Fund.
