One year on, Metro TBM reaches Chickpet from City Market

The Namma Metro achieved a milestone on Friday evening when the tunnel boring machine (TBM) Kaveri, achieved a breakthrough by tunneling to the southern side of Chickpet Underground Metro Station at 4:46 pm, amid cheers and whistling by hundreds of Metro workers who were working at the site for almost a year now.

It was a moment of triumph for both Metro workers and officials as it was one of the most difficult task owing to an extremely rocky terrain with TBM Kaveri facing huge rocks underneath.

The machine has been boring from KIMS station after which it reached the City Market Station and then the Chickpet station.  The tunnel adjacent to the one which achieved breakthrough on Friday, is also going to achieve the same feat in next four to six months as the TBM Krishna has been put for the job, BMRCL officials said.

Officials said that TBM Kaveri took almost one year to complete 432 metres of tunneling from the City Market station to the Chickpet station.

The machine will once again start digging in another 45 days on the same North-South Corridor ahead to reach Majestic, by covering a distance of 750 metres in about six to eight months.

Once the tunneling work on this stretch gets completed, it will connect the North Line with the South Line on the Metro Network for Phase I.

Speaking to mediapersons, BMRCL MD Pradeep Singh Kharola said “ The credit for the breakthrough goes to the engineers and the workers who ensured that there was no untoward incident during the year-long tunneling work and thankfully none of the buildings got damaged or developed cracks during the work. Now, the next stretch is also crucial and again the machines have to go underneath the houses and other buildings”, he said.

When questioned if there could be any delay in completion of Phase I Metro work, Metro MD maintained that they were on job to ensure that there was no delay.

In May this year, TBM Kaveri was stuck on the stretch after hitting huge rocks located 60ft beneath the ground and work resumed after the blades and cutters of the machine were replaced.