Metro tunnelling draws to a close

After five years of work that faced a lot of interruptions, operations will conclude by October-end

Signalling and electrification work will be completed before the inspection.

Tunnel boring machines that set out to create an engineering marvel would complete constructing nearly 25 km of tunnels by October.

A total of 12 machines and scores of workers came to the city from countries, such as China and Russia and drilled the earth relentlessly for five years. That mammoth work will finally end for both Phase I of the project and the Phase I extension in the next two months.

In Phase I of the project, the only stretch where tunnelling work is not complete yet is from Thousand Lights to AG-DMS. Work on this stretch will over by the end of September. Work on the phase I extension project will be over by the end of October.

 

‘Challenging work’

According to officials of the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), efforts are on to speed up the tunnelling work.

“These five years have been very challenging with the difficult soil conditions. But it will all be over in two months. After that, we will focus on laying of tracks and electrical and signalling work,” an official said.

The phase I project that covers 45 km of the city has 24 km of tracks underground and phase I extension project has just about 2 km.

Though the tunnelling work is over, the operations on the portions of the underground network in Phase I, including Anna Salai and north Chennai, will begin only by the end of next year.