Spring 2009 Issue - Special Report
Alaskan Way Viaduct
Posted: April 20, 2009
Dick Robbins
Deep Bore Tunnel Pioneer
It might surprise a lot of people to hear that the preeminent maker of tunnel boring machines is a company in Kent run by a man who is about to win the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering.
Dick Robbins, a lifetime Seattle resident, is president of The Robbins Group subsidiary, and board member for the internationally known Robbins Company in Kent. He will receive the prestigious award at The Franklin Institute Awards in Philadelphia. The Franklin Medal is among the oldest and most prestigious science awards in the world.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Robbins created the world’s leading company that develops hard-rock tunnel boring machines, including those that were used to build the famed Chunnel between England and France. Robbins built all or portions of five of the six machines used to dig the three Chunnel tunnels. Now the company is building both vehicle and utility tunnels all over the world.
His father, James S. Robbins, invented tunneling machines, or “at least he thought he did,” says Dick. Others had made similar inventions before his father, but “my dad’s machine finally made the breakthrough, and made the first economical machines that were able to tunnel and had good performance in moderately hard to hard rock.”
“Dad developed the first machine, back in 1956, that used all rolling cutters – they are just like wheels. They are called disc cutters, 11 or 12 inches in diameter, and they succeeded in cutting hard rock, or crushing it.”
Robbins notes there are two types of tunneling, in soft ground – like around here – and in hard rock, such as the long tunnel now being bored under the Alps in Europe, where Robbins machines and ones from Europe are boring the tunnel. He says his father’s interest was in making machines that would bore hard rock, and that is still the “central emphasis” of the Robbins Company.
Robbins’s company has produced all kinds of new cutter modifications since he succeeded his father, who died in a 1958 plane crash. Dick has 11 patents granted in the field of underground mechanical excavation, and has numerous publications to his credit.
Large tunnel projects are sometimes handled by joint ventures, he says, especially in projects where the ground is partly hard rock and partly soft dirt and sand, or where the ground facing the machine is a combination of soft earth and rock.
“These are complex and difficult tunnels,” Robbins says. “We will build the machine ourselves or will joint-venture with one of the Japanese companies. We have done a lot with Kawasaki and in recent years with Mitsubishi.”
He says the machine that dug the Sound Transit tunnel under Beacon Hill was built by Mitsubishi, but the Robbins Company built structures like the conveyors and other equipment, essential parts of the backup systems for the “trailing machine,” that part of the machine behind the actual boring machine.
In other cases, such as a tunnel in Spain, Robbins says his company will design the machine for Mitsubishi, which in turn will design and build the rest of it in Japan and then ship it to Spain.
Currently, Robbins says the company’s biggest projects are very long water-supply tunnels in India and “maybe a dozen machines” operating in China. Some soft-ground light-rail tunnel machines are built at a Robbins factory in China.
Tunnel construction safety and the safety of a tunnel in operation are two separate issues, says Robbins.
He says a deep bored tunnel through the solid glacial till under Seattle would not be seriously affected by a major earthquake because while the ground around it would move, the tunnel would move with it, making it much different from a surface building or the Viaduct, which is “up there waving around in the air being supported only on the bottom which is moving.”
Once the tunnel is in the ground, he says, it is much safer than anything you can put on the ground or near the surface.
Robbins has some suggestions on what should be done with the tunnel replacement for the Viaduct.
He thinks the Seattle tunnel might be better situated if it started at Safeco Field, moved under Fifth or Sixth avenues, and came out farther north after going under much of Queen Anne hill, perhaps halfway to the Aurora Bridge. He says such a route would remove the “huge construction bottleneck” of the intersection with Mercer. “But it takes a thorough geologic exploration program before a route can be finalized.”
“Not as a tunnel person, but just as a person who has lived here most of my life, any way we can open up the waterfront down where the Alaskan Way Viaduct is now, and make it a user friendly place, is going to be a huge long term advantage to the city for 100 or 200 years,” Robbins said.
“You want a system that will move people more efficiently, especially bypassing the city, because of all the people who now go up the Viaduct, 70% of them don’t want to go into the city, they just want to go by it. You are able to do that much better going under the ground and bypassing the surface streets or I-5. You just have to have a better way to go north and connect with 99.”
