Tunnelling begins on Scarborough Subway Extension
Tunnelling is officially underway on the Scarborough Subway Extension project.
Metrolinx, the Crown agency that manages public transport in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, announced the deployment of Diggy Scardust, the project’s tunnel boring machine (TBM), on January 18.
Since the machine arrived from Germany last year, construction crews have been busy preparing the excavation required to deploy the machine at the project’s launch shaft, located at Sheppard Avenue East and McCowan Road.
Over the next couple of years, the TBM will travel 10 to 15 metres a day, making its way south from the launch shaft site towards Eglinton Avenue East and Midland Avenue. It will dig about 6.9 kilometres of the 7.8-kilometre tunnel that will be required to bring seamless subway service farther into Scarborough.
Construction is being managed by a consortium led by Strabag. Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario awarded a fixed-price contract worth more than $750 million to the consortium in May of 2021.
The remaining portion of the tunnel will be built by the contractor for the stations, rail and systems contract.
In November, Metrolinx and IO selected Scarborough Transit Connect, a consortium led by Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc. and FCC Canada Ltd. as the development partner for the stations, rail and systems phase of the project.
At 10.7 metres wide, the tunnel will be the first in Toronto to contain two subway tracks operating in both directions.
As tunnelling gets underway, crews have already started work at the project’s extraction shaft site at Midland Avenue and Eglinton Avenue East, where the TBM will be extracted from the ground after completing its tunnelling journey.
Metrolinx says that, when open, the subway extension will attract 105,000 daily boardings, including 52,000 by new transit users.