Did you know?

Many RTA engineering and construction projects involve the labour and effort of thousands of different individuals, innovative approaches and engineering feats, and the movement of vast quantities of building materials and spoilage.

Some of the more interesting facts about the Cross City Tunnel Project are tabled below.

Under the landmark

Nine 100 tonne tunnel road headers were used to bore the eight and a half kilometres of the Cross City Tunnel.
For the first time in NSW history, four of these machines were lowered down a 42 metre vertical access shaft, allowing 24 hour tunnelling.

Crossing the city

Under normal traffic conditions a driver can cross the city from east to west or visa versa using the Cross City Tunnel in around two minutes!

Moving a mountain

The Cross City Tunnel was bored out by nine 100 tonne tunnel road headers:

• Two bored from the bottom of the main vertical shaft at William Street.
• Two from the Eastern Distributor entry ramp at Bourke Street.
• One from Sir John Young Crescent.
• One from Darling Harbour.
• Three were used in cutting cross-passages.

During peak periods in the project, around 5000 tonnes of spoil was removed daily via 150 truck and trailer roads. By the project’s completion, approximately 680,000 cubic metres of spoil had been removed. Around 92 per cent of this was reused in other road projects.

Crunching the numbers

Building the Cross City Tunnel involved removing and laying vast amounts of material. The quantities tabled below give some sense of the scope of this project:

• 120,000 cubic metres of rock was removed.
• 680,000 cubic metres of spoil was excavated.
• 32,000 cubic metres of concrete was poured.

In addition you might be interested to know that the tunnel contains:

• 4000 fluorescent lights.
• 420 kilometres of electric cables.
• 546 electronic signs and 300 static signs.
• 108 emergency phones.
• 133 CCTV cameras.
• 4500 cubic metres of asphalt.
• 44,000 rock bolts.

How low can you go?

The tunnel reaches a maximum depth of 53 metres below Hyde Park.

All hands on deck

The project created 1,600 direct jobs and 3,600 indirect jobs during construction. More than 5,200 people undertook safety induction courses to allow them to work a total of 3.3 million work hours on the project.