ABSTRACT
The Light Rail Red Line runs from the city of Bat Yam passing through the cities of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Bnei Brak reaching finally Petah Tikva to the northeast. In the present paper, some of the engineering challenges are described and analyzed. The main challenges were: (1) The crossing under Ayalon River, cutting heavily reinforced piles serving as retaining wall foundations between the railroad and the river. (2) The TBM crossed through the stations’ shafts before they were excavated; a detailed program of excavation and dewatering stages was prepared for this purpose. (3) The alignment crosses under an existing bridge built more than fifty years ago, thereby cutting the foundation piles with the TBM cutter. (4) From the Herzl launching shaft the tunnels are in close proximity and under low overburden, crossing next to more than 100 year old buildings; protection works or other mitigations for buildings in critical or deficient conditions were performed before the TBM crossing.
