Location
New York, New York
Date
16 Apr 2004, 8:00am - 9:30am
Abstract
The East Side Access (ESA) Project to connect the Long Island Railroad to New York’s Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan will be one of the largest tunneling projects ever undertaken in New York. The Manhattan segment of the project includes a series of tunnels and caverns that will be excavated in rock to connect the existing 63rd Street tunnels to twin three-level station caverns beneath Grand Central Terminal, accommodating eight tracks and four platforms. A comprehensive geotechnical investigation program has been conducted and the data has been analyzed to develop a geological model along the tunnel route and rock mass mechanical properties have predicted to evaluate TBM performance and tunnel stability along the alignment. Along with the geological uncertainties associated with TBM tunneling, there are operational complexities that must be incorporated in TBM tunneling in Manhattan. Given the dearth of available real estate in Manhattan and with a view toward minimizing community impact, the TBM components must be lowered to the tunnel level from a shaft in Queens, transported through the existing 63rd Street tunnels to Manhattan, where a chamber will be built to assemble the TBMs. Furthermore, after the TBMs have excavated the first two tunnels, they must be reversed through these tunnels, re-assembled at two chambers constructed for this purpose, and re-launched to bore two other tunnels. This paper presents the geotechnical and physical challenges the project faces and the progressive engineering approach used to address these problems.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
5th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2004 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Sarkar, Subal; Mukherjee, Amitabha; and Benslimane, Aomar, "Rock Tunnelling with TBMs on the East Side Access Project a New Perspective" (2004). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 13.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/5icchge/session06/13
Rock Tunnelling with TBMs on the East Side Access Project a New Perspective
New York, New York
The East Side Access (ESA) Project to connect the Long Island Railroad to New York’s Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan will be one of the largest tunneling projects ever undertaken in New York. The Manhattan segment of the project includes a series of tunnels and caverns that will be excavated in rock to connect the existing 63rd Street tunnels to twin three-level station caverns beneath Grand Central Terminal, accommodating eight tracks and four platforms. A comprehensive geotechnical investigation program has been conducted and the data has been analyzed to develop a geological model along the tunnel route and rock mass mechanical properties have predicted to evaluate TBM performance and tunnel stability along the alignment. Along with the geological uncertainties associated with TBM tunneling, there are operational complexities that must be incorporated in TBM tunneling in Manhattan. Given the dearth of available real estate in Manhattan and with a view toward minimizing community impact, the TBM components must be lowered to the tunnel level from a shaft in Queens, transported through the existing 63rd Street tunnels to Manhattan, where a chamber will be built to assemble the TBMs. Furthermore, after the TBMs have excavated the first two tunnels, they must be reversed through these tunnels, re-assembled at two chambers constructed for this purpose, and re-launched to bore two other tunnels. This paper presents the geotechnical and physical challenges the project faces and the progressive engineering approach used to address these problems.
