NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — If you drive across the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, you can’t miss its $4 billion expansion, expected to be a game changer for transportation in the region and especially there, where traffic snarls remain a quality of life issue for the region’s drivers.
Ryan Banas, the HRBT expansion project director, gave 10 On Your Side an exclusive look inside the project. Banas is working with Virginia Department of Transportation’s Hampton Roads District Engineer Christopher Hall to ensure VDOT’s obligations and responsibilities are carried out and the project stays on track toward completion.
“We like to refer to it as our eight-lane mega trestle,” Banas said at the south mega trestle. “The structure we’re standing on will support eight lanes of travel, four in either direction.”
It is sparkling with clean new concrete — so bright it can give you a sunburn from the sun’s reflection.
It has a width of 139 feet across, and will include two general purpose lanes in each direction, one HOT lane and one part-time shoulder lane. All eight lanes will feed into the eight tunnel lanes — the existing ones and the two new tunnels, each one with two lanes.
“So in the summer we will be taking traffic from the existing eastbound bridge down below, moving them up here, and they will drive along this right shoulder as they go over to Willoughby Spit,” Banas said.
Banas said with eight lanes of traffic on the mega trestle, it is the biggest single bridge we have in Hampton Roads.
“These decks are not to see corrosion for 100 years, so they are built to last,” Banas said. “Our facility is now moving 100,000 cars a day. Imagine when we double the capacity how many more it can move across our harbor.”
Banas also explained what would happen to the current approach bridges to the current tunnels.
“Our two eastbound lanes going from Hampton to Norfolk are going to be shifted to the mega trestle, but for now the traffic heading west from Norfolk to Hampton will remain on the westbound trestle.”
Once all the traffic is shifted to the mega trestle, “we will cut down the current approach bridges, put them on barges and create artificial reefs. Everything will be demolished with a large diameter saw and following the lane lines we will cut these into units…and use them as artificial reefs throughout the Hampton Roads Harbor.”
As part of our journey to report on the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel Expansion we climbed on board the Mary after she was constructed weighing 10 million pounds.
The last time we saw Mary’s face was April 17, 2024, and that’s when she bore through the first tunnel, becoming the first bored tunnel in Virginia history, taking 51 weeks to accomplish.
“It just so happens as of this morning we reached the 50% mark on that second tunnel,” Banas said. “So, it is a huge milestone in mining.”
The expansion project doubles the capacity connecting the Southside and Peninsula, and it is a gamechanger for transportation.
Banas said the concrete rings that become the tunnel are numbered, each with nine segments and each ring weighing 10 tons.
The rings are immediate identifiers on where you are in the tunnels.
“Ring 428 for example, is the low point in our general-purpose tunnel,” Banas said. “That means we are 173 feet beneath the surface of the James River.”
The process is much different than the new Midtown Tunnel in 2016. It was constructed in one piece and brought down on barge.
“Those were really 350-foot-long pieces of tunnel that we emersed in the Elizabeth River,” Banas said.
Constant surveying keeps Mary on her proper track, going in the right direction, at the right elevation, and the right orientation as she bores forward.
Clean fresh air is pumped inside.
“It is taking fresh air from the surface today,” Banas said. “It’s running around 75 degrees and it is dumping it down at the heading, 3,000 feet underground.”
Twenty minutes into our tour, we see the green light, which is the back of Mary.
We also pass piled up slurry pipes, which are used to pump the excavated soil as Mary bores through.
“We pump 13,000 gallons every single minute, or a fully loaded dump truck every 10 seconds,” Banas said.
And leaving nothing to chance, there is also a safe house in case of emergency. It is an airtight rescue chamber.
“So, [with] this project, they elected to bring in a safe harbor, so right now in the event the atmosphere became unbearable for us with smoke or other contaminants, you and 23 of your friends can come in here,” Banas said. “We have meals ready to eat, we can scrub the air that we breathe for 24 hours, and … we could be able to bring in breathable air. There is also a porta potty.”
As we stood before Mary’s green light signify the back of the TBM Banas said,
“Forty feet behind us is where the magic happens,” Banas said while standing before Mary’s green light, signifying the back of the boring machine. “That’s where our cutterhead on Mary’s face is rotated up to two-and-a-half times a minute. Directly in front of that, there is nothing but good old Hampton Roads sand and clay. That is the virgin earth that we’re churning through.”
Two members of the HRBT expansion’s tunnel boring machine crew, programmer Antonio Fasciani and operator Jose Urbano, spend much of their lives underground.
“I love the tunnel boring machine,” Fasciani said. “I have done this in my life. I work every time in this — 22 years, I lost count. So for me, this is my life.”
All of what we saw was taking place under the watchful eye of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of tunnelers, miners and engineers. She is posted at the front of the tunnel for all to pass.
HRBT expansion tunnel information
- The first tunnel was completed on April 17, 2024. It was expected to take one year to bore from the South Island-Norfolk side to the North Island-Hampton side. It was accomplished in 51 weeks
- Took six months to extract Mary — the tunnel boring machine (TBM) and her four trailing gantries from the first tunnel, turn them around. The gantries were lifted to the top of the North Island, turned around and set back down into the pit to be reattached and aligned with the cutterhead and shield to begin the second tunnel. Two 800-ton cranes were brought in to accomplish this
- The cutterhead and shield of the tunnel boring machine (2,500 tons) were turned around in the pit over one shift — 11 hours — using never-before-used technology in the U.S. It’s called nitrogen skate technology. Liquid nitrogen pumped under the cutterhead to lift it just enough to use chains and come-along (cable/power pullers) to turn her around. Technology for turning cutterhead around was used once before in London in 2023 on a smaller tunnel boring machine. The technology is likened to an air hockey table with just that little bit of air that lifts the puck
- The current tunnel being bored is halfway through the process
- Tunneling should be complete in late August or early September
- After tunneling is finished, jet fan ventilation, fire suppression system and roadway must be installed. It’s what they’re working on now in the first tube
- Each new tunnel with have an egress corridor every 300 feet so in the event of an emergency. You can get out of your vehicle and walk into the corridor, and be met with fresh air, and then walk to one of the island
- Mary is nothing without Katherine — the slurry treatment plant (STP). Katherine produces the slurry (or water/clay mixture) which helps hold the earth back so it doesn’t collapse when the cutterhead is boring through the earth. And the slurry is sent back to the STP through 22-inch pipes that start in the first tunnel go through to the current tunnel being bored and return the slurry to the STP — a 3-mile circuit
- Mary will be dismantled when she completes the boring. The machine, which was built in Germany, cannot be reused. These are uniquely designed for each tunnel project.
- We bored down to the Yorktown layer of soil — the best layer for the tunnel
- Deepest part of the new tunnels is 173 feet below mean water line, or 50 feet deeper than current tunnels
- Both new tubes will serve eastbound I-64 traffic only
- Current eastbound tunnel gets reversed and will carry westbound traffic when tunnels are opened)
- New tunnels will open when the project is complete
- Current completion date is late February 2027
- We operate the tunnel boring machine five days per week, 24-hours a day. It stands down on weekends for maintenance
- There are 20-24 people working inside the tunnel boring machine while she’s operating
- The tunnel boring machine is forming the tunnel with concrete liners as she moves along
- There are nine segments to form each ring, with each segment weighing 10 tons
- We need 1,194 rings to complete the 7,900 foot tunnel
- The first new tube required 1,191 rings, three fewer due only to the curvature of the tunnel
- Total number of concrete rings needed to form both tunnels: 2,385. They were preproduced in Cape Charles and shipped here by barge
- There are 25 bridges in the 10-mile corridor project — five new bridges and 20 widened or rehabilitated ones
- Both current bridge trestles to the HRBT are being replaced in both directions
- On the Norfolk side, there is a new eight-lane superstructure carrying all traffic to the new and current tunnels. It’s 25 feet higher than the current bridge, depending on the area of the bridge. It’s higher to prevent corrosion from sea spray, and bridge materials are different from existing trestles
- This summer, the two eastbound lanes of traffic will begin traveling on the new superstructure so the existing trestle can be torn down to make the connections to the existing tunnels
- A new westbound temporary bridge will open later this summer to also begin tearing down the existing bridge to make the connections to the new superstructure
- Current bridges will come down and be broken into chunks to carry out to enlarge existing artificial reefs offshore. VDOT is working with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission on this project
- The Hampton side will have two new bridges
- Throughout the project, there will be eight lanes of traffic across the harbor
- There will always be two free lanes of traffic in each direction and two tolled/two free variable tolling managed by VDOT. Toll fees have not yet been set