Two TBMs excavated and constructed the Central Subway’s 1.5 mile-long tunnels at an average pace of 40 feet per day and will be retrieved in North Beach at the site of the former Pagoda Palace Theatre on Powell Street.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) celebrated the completion of tunneling work for the Central Subway Project, the major extension of the Municipal Railway (Muni) Metro T Third Line.
The two 350-foot-long tunnel boring machines (TBMs) each tunneled 8,500 feet to construct two Central Subway tunnels, which will allow the T Third Line trains to travel quickly beneath SoMa, Union Square and Chinatown when the Central Subway opens in 2019, cutting travel times by more than half along the busy corridor.
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The 750 ton, identical TBMs are named “Mom Chung” after Dr. Margaret “Mom” Chung, the country’s first female Chinese-American physician and a surrogate mother to thousands of veterans in World War II, and “Big Alma” after 19th century San Francisco philanthropist and socialite “Big Alma” de Bretteville Spreckels.
Mom Chung launched in June 2013 and Big Alma followed in November 2013, traveling beneath 4th Street, Stockton Street and Columbus Avenue to excavate and construct San Francisco’s first new subway tunnel in more than 30 years.
The TBMs excavated and constructed the Central Subway’s 1.5 mile-long tunnels at an average pace of 40 feet per day and will be retrieved in North Beach at the site of the former Pagoda Palace Theatre on Powell Street. Over the next few months, both Big Alma and Mom Chung will be dismantled and removed from the tunnels to be reused in tunneling efforts in other cities around the world.
Amtrak will open grant applications March 23 for community projects near the Frederick Douglass Tunnel alignment in Baltimore as part of a $50 million investment tied to the B&P Tunnel Replacement Program.
The Denmark Station $2.3 million construction investment project includes a new 280-foot concrete boarding platform, built eight inches above the top of rail, for improved accessibility for passengers with disabilities and families with small children and much more.
Caltrain and its partners have implemented safety improvements at specific locations in response to known risk conditions, operational needs, and available funding since the agency’s founding.
On a recent episode of METROspectives, METRO Magazine’s Executive Editor Alex Roman sat down with Ana-Maria Tomlinson, Director of Strategic & Cross-Sector Programs at the CSA Group, to explore a bold initiative aimed at addressing those challenges: the development of a National Code for Transit and Passenger Rail Systems in Canada.
Competitive FTA grants will support accessibility upgrades, family-friendly improvements, and cost-efficient capital projects at some of the nation’s oldest and busiest transit hubs.
The 3.92-mile addition will soon take riders west beyond its current Wilshire and Western station in Koreatown, continuing under Wilshire Boulevard through neighborhoods and communities including Hancock Park, Windsor Square, the Fairfax District, and Carthay Circle into Beverly Hills.
Under the plan, all long-distance routes will transition to a universal single-level fleet, replacing today’s mix of bi-level and single-level equipment.
