By rosebell
Considering that the City of Norfolk’s former Visitors’ Centre in Ocean View has been transformed into a learning and community meeting space designed to encourage the public to learn more about the history of the HRBT and the nearly US$4bn expansion project under way, the Hampton Road-Bridge Tunnel Expansion project (HRBT) is celebrating World Tunnel Day today with the inauguration of a project welcome centre.
The responsibility of operating the centre as an educational and learning facility for the expansion project will be up to the US Navy which owns the property, and the City of Norfolk which holds a lease for the property, as well as the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) with 92% of project funding provided by the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission (HRTAC).
The time duration that VDOT spent for refurbishing the site and two-storey building was almost a year. It features a 3.5m-long model of TBM Mary, a model of the project’s slurry treatment plant, artifacts uncovered during project excavations, historic pictures of the tunnels past and present and a conference room.
Also showcased are tributes to NASA pioneers Mary Jackson and Katharine Johnson after whom the TBM and slurry plant are named.
As the funding arm for HRBT Expansion and other regional projects under way throughout the VDOT Hampton Roads District, one wall describes the contributions of HRTAC and video screens display tunneling stories and detail local road projects.
Being Virginia’s first bored road tunnel, the HRBT was built by Hampton Roads Connector Partners (HRCP), a consortium of Dragados USA, Vinci, Flatiron Constructors, and Dodin Campenon Bernard.
