Chennai Metro Rail has kickstarted the work to build a tunnel for the phase II project in the stretch between Greenways Road and Mandaveli.
Greenways Road is one of the important locations in the 116-km long phase II project, and it is a part of corridor 3, which starts at Madhavaram and terminates at SIPCOT, covering various areas including Perambur, Purasawalkam, Sterling Road, Adyar, and Sholinganallur. Four tunnel boring machines (TBM) will be at work here — two to construct a tunnel from Greenways Road to Adyar junction and two from Greenways Road to Mandaveli.
According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), in February, one of the TBMs named ‘Kaveri’ began the tunnelling process towards Adyar. Now, the TBM named ‘Noyyal’ was launched recently at Greenways Road to build a tunnel towards Mandaveli. One more TBM ‘Vaigai’ will start work after a few weeks.
“The distance this TBM has to cover is about 750 m, and we estimate that if the machines progresses without any disruption, it should reach Mandaveli in six months. From the soil tests done so far, we know that there is largely sandy soil in this stretch. The machine will be boring at a depth of about 17 m,” an official said.
Sources said they were in no hurry to start tunnelling in this stretch earlier as the contractor to build the stations on it was only finalised recently. “Unless the station contractor is ready, it doesn’t make sense to start tunnelling. Now, that the contractor has been finalised, we decided to begin work,” a source said.
Among the stretches that have been delayed and will be opened at the end of the project is Greenways Road to Thirumayilai via Mandaveli in 2028. Construction work has been progressing at a steady pace in the remaining two corridors of the project — Light House to Poonamallee (corridor 4) and Madhavaram to Sholinganallur (corridor 5).
