The first component of the tunnel boring machine that will drill the Poiana tunnel on the Sibiu–Pitești motorway has arrived at the Sibiu portal. Work on the bore itself, however, depends on the delivery and assembly of every remaining part of the equipment, a process that the regional roads authority says will take three months.
According to the Direcția Regională de Drumuri și Poduri Craiova, the cutter head of the machine reached the site on a Saturday after a difficult journey. The head weighs 131 tonnes, and the full load transported amounted to 160 tonnes, which made the road transport demanding. In total, more than 100 transports are needed to bring the machine's components to the construction site.
The weight of the load was the main difficulty on the road. The authority described the journey as far from easy, and the transport had to be planned around the size and mass of the equipment. Each of the more than 100 deliveries must arrive and be unloaded before the machine can be put together, which is why the assembly period is measured in months rather than weeks.
At its deepest point, the drilling will take place at roughly 120 metres below ground level. That depth explains the choice of a tunnel boring machine, a large mechanical cutter that advances through the rock behind a rotating head, rather than conventional drill-and-blast methods. The authority has not set out in the material available a firm date for the start of the boring, which remains tied to the completion of assembly. Once all parts are on site and the machine is assembled, the tunnel work can begin at the Sibiu-side portal.
The Poiana tunnel forms part of the Sibiu–Pitești motorway, which is part of the A1 route and is intended to improve connections between Transylvania and the Wallachian plain. The project is one of the larger infrastructure works on the motorway, and the schedule for the tunnel depends directly on how smoothly the logistics operation proceeds. The sources available do not give figures for the project's total cost, the contractor's identity, or the expected completion date of the tunnel, and these details are therefore not reported here.