Chennai Metro to start tunnelling work between Greenways Road and Adyar
The Hindu
The CMRL officials say a tunnel boring machine was lowered into Greenways Road work site few weeks ago and after launching it, it will take about 100 days to cover 1.2 km
Chennai Metro Rail plans to begin building a tunnel between Greenways Road to Adyar from Thursday for constructing underground network in the city for the 118.9-km Phase 2 project. This will be the third tunnel in this project. The stretch between Greenways Road and Adyar is a part of the 45.8-km Madhavaram-SIPCOT corridor. Madhavaram to Shollinganallur (27 km) and Light House to Poonamallee (26.1 km) are the two other corridors in this project has.
According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL), a tunnel boring machine (TBM) was lowered into Greenways Road work site few weeks ago and after launching it, the machine is likely to take about 100 days to cover 1.2 km and reach Adyar. “This machine was originally from Germany and was recently remanufactured at Gummidipoondi before reaching the site at Greenways Road. From our survey, we have found that this stretch will have marine clay and rock. It may not be very difficult to tunnel this stretch and we hope to meet the deadline,” an official said.
In October last year, Chennai Metro Rail first started tunnelling work at Madhavaram Milk Colony where a machine set off boring the earth upto Madhavaram High Road covering 1.4 km. So far, the first machine launched at Madhavaram Milk Colony has completed tunnelling 300 metres and the second machine launched in this site recently has bored 90 metres.
Two more machines will be launched from the Madhavaram Milk Colony shortly. These two machines will serve to build a tunnel for the underground stretch in the Madhavaram-Shollinganallur corridor. The machine will start boring the earth towards Venugopal Nagar in a week, the officials said. “Tunnelling is one of the most difficult part of the project and if we can complete it on time, then integrating it with stations and starting the train services can be begin as per schedule,” the official added.
While residents are worried over deaths due to diarrhoea in Vijayawada, officials still grapple to find the root cause. Contaminated drinking water supplied by VMC officials is the reason, insist people in the affected areas, but officials insist that efforts are on to identify the disease and that those with symptoms other than diarrhoea too are visiting the health camps.