 
Brisbane celebrated a major milestone on Brisbane City Council’s Legacy Way project this week, with the breakthrough of the project’s first tunnel boring machine (TBM) Joyce at Kelvin Grove. Joyce’s breakthrough marks the culmination of more than two years of work and three million work hours, moving motorists one step closer to a four-minute trip between Toowong and Kelvin Grove once Legacy Way, Brisbane City Council’s 4.6 kilometre road tunnel that will connect the Western Freeway at Toowong with the Inner City Bypass (ICB) providing an alternative route for traffic leaving the Western Freeway and travelling to and from the ICB. Once open in 2015, Legacy Way will almost halve peak hour travel times between the Centenary Bridge and the ICB and considerably help Brisbane’s current congestion problem.
The Herrenknecht-built machine, along with her sister TBM, Annabell, has demonstrated outstanding levels of production with an average rate of excavation reaching more than 150 metres per week, setting the project at a world class level for production using large diameter TBMs. During her time digging under Brisbane’s inner western suburbs, Joyce achieved incredible records excavating 49.7 metres in a single day, as well as a maximum of 248.82 metres in one week and a 30-day maximum of 787.78 metres.
Fernando Fajardo, Project Director for Transcity, the joint venture building the link, said he was extremely proud of the project’s performance. “The breakthrough of Joyce in such a short timeframe is an amazing feat, and a credit to the team’s combined expertise and hard work,” Mr Fajardo said. “The performance of our two TBMs, Annabell and Joyce, has set our project amongst the best in the world, and we are all very proud of our achievements. Joyce’s performance can been attributed to our seamless logistics process, innovations in tunnel construction, and perfect ground conditions.”
Now she has arrived at the eastern worksite, TBM Joyce will be disassembled over the next three months.
