“Flamingo”, the tunnel boring machine (TBM) deployed at Marina Beach near the Light House, took off slowly on Friday. It is expected to tunnel through tough soil conditions and underneath several old structures, including a 300-year-old mosque in Kutchery Road, to pave the 1.96-km underground line between Light House and Thirumayilai as part of the Chennai Metro Rail’s phase II project.
The Light House Metro Rail station will be built as the longest with a length of 416 metres and a width of 35 metres to accommodate 3,000 commuters at a time.
According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL), unlike other underground stations, the platform will be on the first level, the concourse or ticketing level will be on the second level at the Thirumayilai station.
Director (projects) of CMRL T. Archunan said: “Since Marina beach is visited by lakhs of people, we wanted to build a massive station here. Since it is close to the sea, the stations have been designed with Automatic Flood Gate System and the shutters will close just before any flooding begins.”
Major facility
Being a terminal station in the Light House-Poonamallee corridor, it will have capacity to house 12 trains so that they don’t have to be brought all the way from Poonamallee depot every day.
Mr. Archunan said Coastal Regulation Zone clearance had been obtained for building this station.
Twenty-three TBMs will together create the underground network across the city as part of the ₹61,843-crore phase II project that will be built with three corridors — Madhavaram to SIPCOT (corridor 3), Light House to Poonamallee (corridor 4) and Madhavaram to Sholinganallur (corridor 5). Thirumayilai-Lighthouse line is part of corridor 4 in phase II project and Flamingo is the first TBM to be launched for this corridor. Four TBMs will be at work in the corridor 4 to build a 10-km underground network.
Tunnelling is expected to be pretty challenging here with the existing geological conditions on this stretch, the officials said.
“Initially, we have to be very careful while drilling from Light House till Kutchery Road as there will be sandy soil. We have to be cautious failing which there can be sinkholes. After Kutchery Road, the TBM will have to drill through hard rock up to Thirumayilai,” another official said.
