Proud ‘Mary’ has arrived: Officials welcome the machine that will be borin’ new tunnels for the HRBT

Dec 28, 2023

State and local officials celebrated a milestone Tuesday at the Port of Virginia in the $3.8 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project — the arrival of a 9.8 million-pound tunnel boring machine named Mary.

"All the work we’ve been doing on the project thus far has been preparing for this very moment," said Stephen Brich, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The massive machine was custom-made in Germany and will be used to dig straight into the soil under the Hampton Roads harbor during the construction of new twin, two-lane tunnels.

Several students from Saint Gregory the Great Catholic School in Virginia Beach sat among the state and local leaders at Tuesday's ceremony, held to commemorate the arrival of the machine. The students won a competition to name the tunnel-boring machine.

Their winning idea was to name it after Mary Winston Jackson, the late Hampton native and aerospace engineer of "Hidden Figures" fame.

Although Mary was disassembled and transported via three ships to the Port of Virginia in mid-November, Virginia Secretary of Transportation Shannon Valentine confirmed her safe arrival at the Norfolk International Terminal. The machine will be reconstructed in the coming months, and boring will begin in mid-2022.

These tunnels, along with the widening of Interstate 64, are intended to relieve congestion and increase tunnel and interstate travel capacity between Hampton and Norfolk. Accidents and traffic back-ups are a common occurrence in the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel — a 3.5-mile stretch that includes two two-lane tunnels. The traffic corridor is considered one of the most congested in the region, with upwards of 100,000 vehicles per day during the peak summer season, according to VDOT.

"We in the commonwealth are bringing every asset to the table to give the people in this region what they value most: time," Valentine said.

The expansion project has also promised to promote economic growth across the region by creating jobs and boosting the tourism, ports and military industries.

"Infrastructure is a critical ingredient for the economic vitality of a region," said Donnie Tuck, mayor of Hampton and chair of the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission. "With Mary's arrival, we are one step closer to essentially doubling the capacity at the region's largest choke point."

Officials also boasted that the tunnel-boring strategy is more environmentally friendly than the approach used with past tunnels in Hampton Roads, which involved digging a trench at the bottom of the harbor and submerging prefabricated pieces of tunnel.

VDOT has said the tunnel-boring method has less of an impact on wildlife, while also causing fewer disruptions to maritime traffic.

Season Roberts, a VDOT-HRBT Expansion Project communications consultant, confirmed that the project is on schedule for completion in November 2025.

Julianna Morano, 323-553-2644, [email protected]

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