TBMs Avni & Urja Arrive for Bangalore Metro Phase 2’s Tunneling

Larsen & Toubro’s tunnel boring machines DZ669 (Avni) and DZ670 (Urja) arrived in Bangalore city on February 20 for excavating and building tunnels on the 13.885 km Dairy Circle – Nagawara underground section of Bangalore Metro’s 21.386 km Line-4 (Reach 6 / Pink Line) of the 73.92 km Phase 2 project.

Both Ø6.65m slurry machines were dispatched from tunnel boring machine (TBM) manufacturer China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (CRCHI)’s plant in Changsha, China back in November 2019 after completing factory acceptance tests (FAT), and made a touch-down at Chennai Port in early February from where its parts were loaded on top of trailers and brought to Bangalore over a roughly 250 km road journey.

Per the tunneling plan, TBM Avni will first be launched from Shivaji Nagar Station to build tunnels on the line’s 2.755 km package RT-02 (Vellara Road Station – Shivaji Nagar). It will later be followed by another TBM, nicknamed Lavi, which passed FAT in December 2019. Further north, TBM Urja will be launched from Cantonment Station to build tunnels on the 2.884 km package RT-03 (Shivaji Nagar Station – Tannery Road), and it will later be followed by TBM Vindhya.

Here’s a general alignment of the line. The BMRCL in January 2018 decided to stick with their decision to place the Cantonment Station at Bamboo Bazaar (see location) instead of the original location which was closer to the railway station (as depicted below).

Underground section of Gottigere – Nagawara line – see exact alignment/location of the stations here
Shields of one of the TBMs spotted on NH-44 near Attibele – Photo Copyright: Bangalore Mirror
TBM Urja (DZ670) parked on Cubbon Road – Photo Copyright: Prajvani
TBM Avni’s parts at Shivaji Nagar Station – Photo Copyright: Abhilash Singh
Photo Copyright: Abhilash Singh
TBM’s cutter head – Photo Copyright: Abhilash Singh

For more updates, check out the Bangalore section of The Metro Rail Guy!

– TMRG

written by

Global traveler who prefers mass rapid transit

7 Responses to "TBMs Avni & Urja Arrive for Bangalore Metro Phase 2’s Tunneling"

  1. Surya Prasad C A says:

    Where is the exact alignment and station locations for the elevated section of this line? Where is Gottigere station? No signs of metro till Gottigere, it’s stopped (Last station constructed) at Loyala school Kalena agrahara.

    Reply
  2. Krishnan says:

    Hi TMRG , my understanding is that we need some Chinese experts to run the TBM .I really hope that they some how manage with video confrencing till the Virus scare goes away.I am sure it will take a couple of months to assemble them and lower them to the shaft in anycase.

    Reply
    • TMRG says:

      They need a small crew, usually about 5 people, on-site from CRCHI to assemble & operate the machine. Video-conferencing unfortunately won’t work. The virus has affected Mumbai’s Coastal Road tunneling project as well.

      Reply
  3. Narendra Babu Gummadi says:

    All the best

    Reply
  4. S M says:

    Good Day,

    Thank you so much for your diligent work. Your breadth of coverage, from MTA(NYC) to MTR(HKG) to Indian metro systems is impressive!

    Would you know what is the exact tunnel route between the MG Road and Shivajinagar stations in BMRCL ?

    Also, where can one find “Influence Zone” map, for this portion of the line, that BMRCL claims to have published ?

    Thanks
    SM

    Reply

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