Blue Line's Underground Phase Begins With TBM Naming
Montreal's Blue Line extension enters construction's most critical phase as a massive tunnel boring machine prepares to dig 4.6 kilometres eastward.
The Blue Line extension is about to get serious. After years of planning and permitting, the project's moving underground—literally—with a 9.7-metre-wide tunnel boring machine about to start carving a 4.6-kilometre path from the future Vertières station to Anjou.
This is the moment where infrastructure stops being blueprints and becomes something you can touch (or at least see the entrance of). The machine, which officials are preparing to name, represents millions of tonnes of rock and earth displaced in the service of getting eastbound commuters across town without a car.
Montreal's transit future has always moved glacially—the planning committees, the funding cycles, the permits that stack on top of permits. But once a TBM starts spinning, things accelerate fast. You'll start seeing it on local news, Twitter threads, Reddit arguments about whether this will actually happen on schedule. The machine becomes a symbol: proof that yes, this is actually happening.
The east-end extension has been the missing piece of the metro map for so long that it's taken on an almost mythical status. Now it's real enough to tunnel through limestone.