On 26/05/2023 Phyllis, the second of two massive TBMs that are excavating twin tunnels for the Broadway Subway Project, broke through to the future Broadway-City Hall Station, marking another milestone for this major rapid-transit project.
The machine is named after Phyllis Munday, a passionate mountaineer best known for exploring and documenting the Coast Mountains and Mount Waddington, and nurse and founder of the Girl Guides in British Columbia. Phyllis has excavated 1,350 m of tunnel and installed 884 liner rings since starting at the future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station in late November 2022.
The Broadway Subway Project is a 5.7-km extension of the Millennium Line from VCC-Clark Station to West Broadway and Arbutus Street, which will provide people with fast, convenient SkyTrain service along the Broadway corridor. The corridor is home to B.C.’s second-largest jobs centre, health-care services, an emerging innovation and research hub, and growing residential communities.
The project means faster travel, better access and fewer cars on the road in this heavily used corridor. Once in service, the trip from VCC-Clark to Arbutus Station will take 11 minutes, saving the average transit commuter almost 30 minutes a day and relieving congestion along Broadway.
Phyllis has joined Elsie, the tunnel-boring machine named after notable B.C.-born Elizabeth (Elsie) MacGill, the world’s first female aeronautical engineer, at the future Broadway-City Hall Station for planned maintenance.
The new Broadway-City Hall Station is the deepest station along Broadway at more than 20 m underground, so that the Millennium Line extension can be built underneath the active Canada Line. The station stretches 210 m over two blocks under Broadway between Alberta and Cambie streets to provide space for a crossover section of track where trains can switch directions when needed. The station will have additional capacity for the expected volume of transit users, including passenger connections being built underneath Cambie Street, in order for people to easily transfer between the north-south Canada Line and the east-west Millennium Line.
For further information please click here and ca/38 for the tunnelbuilder archive. Also visit https://news.gov.bc.ca/ and https://www.broadwaysubway.ca/. 21/23.
