Video: digging under Crenshaw Boulevard

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The first six months of 2016 were full of milestones for the Crenshaw/LAX Line. The project celebrated reaching its halfway mark in May and construction is now ongoing throughout the entire 8.5-mile project alignment.

The other major development this year has been the progress of Harriet, the project’s tunnel boring machine. The machine was ceremonially named and its pieces lowered underground at the Expo/Crenshaw excavation site earlier this year. After months of assembly and testing, the machine began tunneling under Crenshaw Boulevard in late April.

The time-lapse video above captures the machine’s launch and first month of excavation of the first of two tunnels.

The next time we’ll see the 950-ton machine will be when it breaks through the excavation site at the future Martin Luther King Jr. Station at MLK Jr. and Crenshaw boulevards. From there it will continue south to the Leimert Park Station excavation site, where it will then be returned to Expo/Crenshaw to begin digging the second tunnel.

You can follow the Crenshaw/LAX project on Twitter here.

Harriet also has her own account.

Categories: Projects

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5 replies ›

  1. Not sure but why don’t they just put a direct tunnel from LAX into Union station? Look at all the traffic that would clear up on the freeways and look at the people who would be using MetrolinkJust hop on the Metrolink and take it to union station and then into LAX. I would fly out of LAX more offen then have to drive almost an hour from San Bernardino to LAX and fight all that traffic and then fighting the traffic coming back depending on the time of day. It sometimes takes me almost 2 hours to get home to San Bernardino from LAX . I could enjoy riding the train all the way. Just like I do when I leave from Heathrow Airport in London. Its a really nice ride into London from the airport. We are so behind in the times.They should have put the subay to LAX first then into Hollywood and the valley.

  2. Which stations are underground? Which are at street level?

    YORKMAN LOWE 510 601 9675

  4. Hard to see from this time lapse, but it appears that the ‘spoil’ is being removed in some hopper cars.
    Is this material being examined for fossils or archaeological items of interest?
    BTW next to the Expo/Crenshaw station we saw stacks of the concrete tunnel lining segments waiting to go in.

    And just who are those musicians? 🙂 TIA!

    • Hi Mike,

      Yes, all excavations on the project are required to have archeological monitoring in accordance with the environmental impact report.

      Music is from the YouTube Free Audio Library by the band Huma Huma and the song is appropriately called “It’s All Happening.”

      Joe
      Contributor, The Source