BMRCL's Urja digs 900-m tunnel in 6 months

Bengaluru: Tunnel boring machine (TBM) Urja made a breakthrough at Pottery Town station on Thursday at 10.30 am, as it dug a 900-metre tunnel between the Cantonment metro station and Pottery town after six months of work.

Larsen and Toubro Ltd, which has bagged the work on two packages connecting Vellara Junction to Tannery Road, has taken up the work. Urja had started tunnelling from the Cantonment station towards Pottery Town station on February 15, 2022. The TBM had previously set the record of tunnelling 27 metres in a single day in April, which was nearly double the normal daily tunneling length of 8 to 15 metres. Speaking about the breakthrough, one of the metro official stated, Vindhya TBM achieved the breakthrough at Pottery town station today at 10.30 am.

It has completed 900m tunnelling between cantonment and pottery town station. It took 184 days to complete the tunnelling which started on 15 February 2022. Cumulative tunneled by TBM Vindhya till date is 1755m. This Ø6.67m CRCHI slurry machine is part of the Bengaluru Metro Phase 2 projects 2.884 km package (Shivajinagar- Tannery Road) which was awarded by the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) in February 2019. After completing the 862m Cantonment – Shivajinagar north-bound tunnel in September 2021, it was then recommissioned in December 2021 to build the 906.702 m Cantonment – Pottery Town Station section's north-bound tunnel.