The Dolores Dispatch: Gettin' Bored on McNeil Drive

Howdy, Austin! My name's Dolores and I'm a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), but don't you dare call me boring! Despite the name, tunnel boring is very exciting. 

I'm about to help Austin out big time by digging a giant hole underground through part of your city for a major project called the McNeil Transmission Main. My work will give my construction buddies enough space to double the size of the water pipe under McNeil Drive with a tunnel about 1.6 miles long at a depth of 52 feet. That’s a lot of dirt and rock to get out of the way, but it's fine with me. Tunnel boring is what I was made to do, I'm really good at it, and it’s honestly hard for me to think about anything else. 

But the first step to letting me dig is getting me underground, and that’s harder than it sounds when you’re 160 feet long and weigh 100,000 pounds, give or take. Have you ever been lifted by a crane? Here’s what that looked like for me last month, as I arrived on a flatbed truck at the McNeil project site. 

In these photos, the workers are lowering my cutter head, which is certainly my best angle, as the first step to getting me fully assembled underground so I can get my bore on. Anyway, that's enough photos of me, let's call it a day for now — next time, we’ll dig into more details about how I work and what I’ll be doing down here. Have a boring day, folks!