The Railway Reconstruction Bureau said the construction of a tunnel under the Love River (愛河) in Kaohsiung is scheduled to be completed by the end of this month, adding that the line would become operational in 2017.
The completion of the tunnel is significant, as it is the most challenging part of the underground railway line project, the bureau said.
Bureau Deputy Director-General Tang Jih-horng (唐繼宏) said the construction had to be done in three different stages due to the difficulty of the project.
Work began from the east side of the river in 2011, continued on the west side in 2012 and the final stage began in the middle of the river in 2013, Tang said.
Tang said the construction could not interfere with flood prevention work on the river, nor could it obstruct the flow of water.
The bureau adopted a “cut-and-cover” method, which involves cofferdams that wall off an area in the river that can be pumped dry to allow workers to access the riverbed, he said.
Tang said it took the construction team three years just to build a sturdy overhead support system for the tunnel beneath the riverbed that could hold the weight of overlying sediment and water.
Perng Jia-der (彭家德), director of the bureau’s southern region engineering office, said construction teams could only work during the dry season, which runs from November to April, adding that they connected the underwater tunnel with the two above-ground sections on either side of the river in October last year.
Perng said that the bureau still needs to work on other projects inside the tunnel, including electrical systems, railway pavement and platforms.
Hsia Heng-ren (夏恆仁), an office section chief, said building a tunnel under the Love River was much more difficult than the connecting New Taipei City’s Banciao (板橋) and Taipei’s Wanhua (萬華) districts in a similar construction.
The Love River has a narrow course and the riverbed was mostly watery mud, Hsia said.
The Kaohsiung project is to run from Zuoying District (左營), through downtown to Fengshan District (鳳山), a total of 15.37km, the bureau said.
The construction cost of the entire project was projected at NT$99.9 billion (US$3.06 billion).
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