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There’s a lot going on when it comes to Melbourne’s transport network and, this month, another major development has been announced. Melbourne’s long-awaited Suburban Rail Loop is officially going underground, with tunnelling now underway between Burwood and Glen Waverley.
The Suburban Rail Loop is slated to open in 2035 and, when complete, it will connect Melbourne’s middle suburbs with a new orbital rail line. The government says the project will cut travel times, ease congestion and provide rail connections to Monash and Deakin universities for the first time. According to the Victorian government, the project is currently on time and under budget.
To move the project along, there’s some pretty complex engineering happening beneath our feet. The TBMs are being launched using an ‘umbilical method’ – a Victorian first – because of the confined space at the site. Essentially, the front section of the machine starts tunnelling while the rest of the enormous contraption is gradually assembled behind it.
The first tunnel boring machine (TBM), dubbed Alice, has started digging from Burwood towards Glen Waverley, marking another major milestone for the mammoth rail project. A second machine, Hacia, is already in the ground and is expected to begin excavating the second twin tunnel in the next few weeks. And if you’re wondering what's behind the names – Alice is named after musician Alice Ivy, while Hacia pays tribute to construction industry trailblazer Hacia Atherton.
The tunnelling program is set to ramp up further, with a third TBM due to launch from Clarinda later this year. Then more machines are expected to get to work next year, tunnelling from Burwood towards Box Hill and from Heatherton towards Cheltenham.
Public Transport Minister Vicki Ward said the tunnelling milestone was moving ahead as planned. “Tunnelling is powering ahead on this important project for Victoria, as Labor gets on with building our much-needed orbital rail,” Ward said.
If everything goes to plan, these giant machines will spend the next few years carving out the tunnels that will eventually carry passengers across the suburbs – meaning the next time you’re stuck in traffic around Burwood, you can at least console yourself with the knowledge that there’s a very large machine digging an alternative route underneath you. The project is set to be complete in 2035.
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