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With the rapid rise in population both on the island and in the general Melbourne area, a new source of handling the heavy volume of traffic was required. Proposed alternatives included building another bridge but studies showed that (as in the 192 bridge in Melbourne Center), traffic congestion would still be a problem. The second proposal was to build an underground tunnel linking the mainland to the island... Surveys were performed to see if this was economically sound, population impact, road usage, traffic considerations and how it would affect traffic both on routes A1A and 1... In 1996, construction started on the west side of the Indian River. Leasing a tunnel boring machine from US Tunnel Machines, Inc., boring started in May of 1996. Breakthru was completed in July of 1997 with final tunnel completion on February, 1998.