Tunnelling has begun on the North East Link project in Victoria, with the first of two TBMs now digging the 6.5-kilometre tunnel between Watsonia and Bulleen.
North East Link is the biggest ever investment in Melbourne’s north east. The 6.5 kilometre North East Link tunnels from Watsonia to Bulleen will take 15,000 trucks off local roads a day and reduce travel times by up to 35 minutes.
The two TBMs have been named Zelda and Gillian, to honour two ground-breaking Victorian women.
The late West Heidelberg resident Zelda D’Aprano AO was a renowned women’s rights activist who worked tirelessly to close the gender pay gap and established the Women’s Action Committee.
Dr Gillian Opie is a neonatal paediatrician at the Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg and founded Australia’s first breast milk bank – providing sick and premature babies in Melbourne’s neonatal intensive care units with safe, screened and pasteurised milk.
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TBM Zelda and TBM Gillian will dig approximately 10 metres per day and up to 45 metres underground, building the tunnels that will pass traffic under instead of through local suburbs. Each TBM is 90 metres long, 15.6 metres high, and 4000 tonnes, making them among the biggest in the southern hemisphere.
As they excavate the tunnels, the TBMs will install tunnel walls made of approximately 44,000 individual concrete segments that have been made locally in Benalla.
Tunnelling will continue into 2026, with the tunnels opening to traffic in 2028.
At the 2024-25 Budget the Federal Government committed an additional $3.25 billion to the North East Link Project to make a total contribution of $5 billion, with the Victorian Government providing the remaining project funding.