The TBM that will carve 7km of tunnels for the Grand Paris Express Line 15 West has arrived on site.
TBM Houda, which will complete the Package 2 drive from Saint-Ouen to Courbevoie, was previously used on Line 16 in 2020 to excavate 5.8km of tunnel between Aulnay Val Francilia and Sevran-Livry stations in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Webuild refurbished the 2,000-tonne, 10m-diameter Herrenknecht TBM in Italy before working with consortium partner NGE to transport the machine to Paris.
Webuild says the machine’s overhaul, combined with advanced monitoring and maintenance technologies, extends the TBM’s service life, optimises its performance and saves around 12 months compared with manufacturing a new TBM.
“This industrial approach combines operational efficiency, efficient use of resources and a lower environmental impact,” the company says.
The TBM’s 2,200km journey to Gennevilliers used multimodal logistics to minimise the environmental footprint. The 12 heaviest components, including the 170-tonne cutterhead, travelled from the port of Civitavecchia near Rome by road, sea and inland waterway.
The same approach will be applied during tunnel construction. Eighty per cent of the 500,000m³ of excavated material will be removed by barge, avoiding around 64,000 lorry journeys on roads in the Paris region. Most of the material will be sent to recovery and reuse channels.
The €1.38bn Package 2 will use precast fibre-reinforced concrete tunnel segments manufactured in the Paris region at a plant co-owned by NGE. Webuild says this solution halves the amount of steel required compared with conventional methods.
Starting from the Les Cabœufs ancillary structure in Gennevilliers, TBM Houda will complete two successive drives – a 1.2km drive from Gennevilliers to Saint-Ouen; and a 5.8km drive from Gennevilliers to Courbevoie.
Delivered for Société des Grands Projets, Line 15 West is scheduled to open by 2031.
