Choindez
Double benefit
Even for Switzerland, where a tunnel is something rather normal, is the new highway A16 ("Transjurane") something special. On 84 kilometers, the highway has eleven tunnels with a length of at least one kilometer, one of them being the Tunnel de Bure (Herrenknecht Single Shield TBM).
A 3.2-kilometer-long tunnel was required for the Choindez gorge bypass. Befor the road tunnel was excavated, a Herrenkknecht Gripper TBM bored a tunnel that would afterwards have the function of an escape tunnel. At the same time, mechanized tunnelling from September 2008 until November 2009 revealed a lot about the geological and hydrological characteristics of the mountain that later speeded up the construction of the road tunnel.
