Skip to main content

Mexico’s longest tunnel project being excavated

Congestion is particularly bad on the road from the city centre to Juan Álvarez international airport. Jams are frequent on the section of road between Acapulco Bay and the Diamante and Puerto Marques suburbs, which currently means climbing La Escénica. To tackle the problem the city authorities decided to build the new tunnel and bypass the traffic jams. The route of the 3.2km tunnel runs under the Cumbres de Llano Largo mountain. The contract for excavating the two tunnels was awarded to the Aca-Túnel con
July 18, 2017 Read time: 3 mins
Indeco has experience in configuring its breakers for use in tunnelling
RSSTwo specially configured hydraulic breakers from Indeco are being used in the project to construct Mexico’s longest tunnel. The HP 3000 ABF units are being used at the Aca-Túnel jobsite in Acapulco to help build the new tunnel, which is intended to reduce congestion in one of Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations

Congestion is particularly bad on the road from the city centre to Juan Álvarez international airport. Jams are frequent on the section of road between Acapulco Bay and the Diamante and Puerto Marques suburbs, which currently means climbing La Escénica. To tackle the problem the city authorities decided to build the new tunnel and bypass the traffic jams. The route of the 3.2km tunnel runs under the Cumbres de Llano Largo mountain.

The contract for excavating the two tunnels was awarded to the Aca-Túnel consortium, which comprises the privately held firms 2765 ICA and CARSO, two of Mexico’s key contractors.

Maquinter, Indeco’s distributor in Mexico, sells and rents out construction machinery equipment in various different states in the country. The consortium, Aca-Túnel, sent the distributor a provisioning request for Indeco hydraulic breakers. Indeco units had recently been used successfully by ICA in Oaxaca State on a road-building project, which strongly influenced the decision to opt for breakers from the same supplier. The two HP 3000 ABFs (HP 5000s in the US), have been mounted on 178 Caterpillar 320 excavators.

“Tunnelling is a particularly tough application for hydraulic hammers, due to the special conditions they are required to work under,” explained Indeco’s marketing manager Michele Vitulano. In tunnelling jobs there is more dust around the breaker than for quarrying work, due to the enclosed nature of the operating area. To prevent the risk of extra wear, additional water damping and tool greasing technology is often used in tunnelling jobs. Working temperatures can also be higher in tunnelling as there is less airflow, so hydraulics need extra cooling. And as breakers often have to be operated horizontally or even pointing upwards in tunnelling work, further measures are needed to provide protection for the internal working components.

However, as hydraulic breakers have been used successfully in Italian tunnelling projects for many years, Indeco has plenty of experience in configuring its units for use in this type of application

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • High speed bridge demolition minimises disruption
    February 16, 2012
    A high speed bridge demolition project has been carried out successfully in Germany. Speed was of the essence as the bridge spanned an important road link and had to be removed in a tight time frame, minimising disruption to traffic.
  • High speed bridge demolition minimises disruption
    April 13, 2012
    A high speed bridge demolition project has been carried out successfully in Germany. Speed was of the essence as the bridge spanned an important road link and had to be removed in a tight time frame, minimising disruption to traffic.
  • Indeco’s tough tools for demolition
    November 18, 2019
    Indeco has upgraded several of its demolition tools, making them more durable and versatile than before
  • State-of-the art road tunnels in construction and use of ITS
    April 25, 2013
    A wealth of major road tunnel construction projects and significant cant ITS installations within existing key road tunnels have been recently completed or will soon be underway. Guy Woodford examines some of them. A state-of-the art Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) - the 10th largest ever to be built worldwide will be put to work later this year on New Zealand Transport Agency’s landmark Waterview Connection project in Auckland. The giant Herrenknecht-manufactured machine will be used to construct the twin 2.5