Precast concrete segments have now arrived in Watsonia, ready to line the walls of Victoria’s biggest road project, the North East Link.
More than 46,000 concrete segments are being manufactured by LS Precast in Benalla for the 6.5 km tunnels on the North East Link project. Each day, 90 segments are made, creating jobs for 120 regional workers, two hours from Watsonia in Melbourne’s north-east.
The first of the segments have been delivered and are currently being housed in a large shed at Watsonia. They will be installed by tunnel boring machines (TBMs)when the first one begins its journey to Bulleen in the coming weeks. When tunnelling has begun, the segments will be transported from the shed, through the tunnel, and to the back of the TBM which will pick them up and place them in the tunnel wall.
LS Precast has already supplied 49,000 concrete products for the West Gate Tunnel Project so the transition to providing segments for the North East Link project has secured a pipeline of regional jobs.
Across the north-east, an enormous amount of work is already underway preparing for the tunnelling. The 200-metre-long TBM launch box is complete, and work is being done to prepare the Lower Plenty Road and Manningham Road sites for the arrival of the TBMs, which will begin tunneling in the coming weeks.
Works are also underway to prepare for the upgrade of the freeways that will connect to the North East Link tunnels, with barriers and worksites being set up along the Eastern Freeway and M80 Ring Road.
The North East Link tunnels and freeway upgrades will be completed in 2028, cutting travel times by up to 35 minutes and removing 15,000 trucks off local roads.
Watch the first precast segment delivery for the tunnels.
About the author
Desi Corbett
Desi is the Editor of Concrete in Australia and at the helm of our magazine for 8 years. She was behind the Institute's weekly news bulletins from 2016-2021 and is now writing our focused news items. Desi has been an engineering news and features journalist/editor across all disciplines since 2013 - part of a 30-year career writing for a wide range of industries.