ITD Begins Casting Tunnel Segments for Bangalore Metro’s Pink Line
Workers from ITD Cementation India Ltd. today began pouring concrete to cast their very first tunnel ring segment for constructing a 4.591 km underground section of Bangalore Metro’s 21.386 km Line-4 (Reach 6 / Pink Line) which will connect Nagawara – Kalena Agrahara through 18 stations.
The event commenced at 10 am at ITD Cementation’s casting yard facility in Baiyappanahalli from where a total of 4603 segments are expected to be cast to form the Pink Line’s tunnels which will have a 5.6 meter internal diameter.
ITD Cementation is responsible for building the 4.591 km Package RT-04 (Tannery Road – North Ramp) of the 73.92 km Bangalore Metro Phase 2 project which was awarded with a contract value of Rs. 1771.25 crore in November 2019 with a deadline of 42 months. Earlier this month, they commenced ground work at Venkateshpura and Tannery Road stations.
ITD’s scope of work involves building this section’s twin tunnels (total 6.34 km), roughly 360 meter ramp at Nagawara, and four stations at Tannery Road, Venkateshpura, Kadugundanahalli (formerly Arabic College) and Nagawara.
Here are some snaps. A tunnel ring is typically 1.4 m wide, and consists of 5 segments + 1 ‘key’ segment.
With this development, tunnel ring segments are now being cast for all four packages of the 13.885 km underground section of the Pink Line. Images of Larsen & Toubro’s casting yard for packages RT-02 and RT-03 can be viewed here.
Per BMRCL’s August newsletter which was published today, L&T had completed casting 683/3244 rings (21.1%) in Peenya, while Afcons Infrastructure on Package RT-01 had cast 92% of an undisclosed number of temporary rings.
As shared earlier, ITD Cementation plans to use two refurbished Herrenknecht tunnel boring machines (TBMs), currently stored in Chennai, with serial numbers S-839 and S-840. These are both mixed shield earth pressure balance machines (EPBM), which previously saw action on Delhi Metro Magenta Line’s Package CC-32, unlike the 4 slurry based TBMs Larsen & Toubro is using on packages RT-02 & RT-03.
Per the tunneling plan, they will first travel south from Venkateshpura to Tannery Road and then be brought back to Venkateshpura for tunneling northwards towards Nagawara.
For more updates, check out the Bangalore section of The Metro Rail Guy!
– TMRG
Congratulations.
TMRG, is there any possiblity to extend the Pink line till Kempegowda Airport?. Bcoz, they have clearly mentioned to construct a ramp beyond Nagawara. What’s your opinion about this?
From Nagawara, they can route it anywhere they (BMRCL, MLAs, RE sharks) choose to. Airport is an option, Yelahanka is another. Just need them to take a decision and stick to it.
RE sharks decide on metro routes? Didn’t know this.
If so in Bengaluru, it must be far worse in Delhi, Gurugram & Mumbai, especially Mumbai & Gurugram that are being run by RE mafia.
Even Hyderabad that has a history of the Maytas fiasco, now being run by another private construction firm (L&T) that has been given over 200 acres for RE development.
RE sharks across India affect the decision making process through their political friends for metro lines especially planned in peripheral/suburban lands.
Metro lines in the built up part of cities are demand and transit-pattern driven.
The OOR metro line to airport is not feasible from city planning point of view , it’s like adding an additional parallel infrascture to a major road infrastructure.The only viable option is pink line extension to airport which diagonally bisects the city.
U r right, that’s why I previously said. That the ORR-Airport Line to be made as a Airport Express Line to make the line feasible or they have a choice to follow the Seoul Metro’s AREX, which runs 2 types of service:-
1) Express Train (Nonstop from Seoul Station to Seoul Incheon Int’l Airport)
2) All Stop Train (Stop at all stations from Seoul Station to Seoul Incheon Airport)
Extending Pink Line to Airport, while being shorter, would mean passing through less developed areas past RK Hegdenagar, which is 17km of virgin territory till Mylanahalli, apart from about 3km within airport premises.
However, KIAL has made clear that they will not permit underground metro below runway. Hence, that route is ruled out.
And viability of metro is determined by number of commuters & future ridership projections, not by existence of parallel infrastructure that might already be saturated or might soon become saturated.
By your logic, ORR metro wasn’t required in Delhi either as Delhi’s ORR is also “parallel infrastructure” by your definition.
Further, it may not be required even on Bangalore’s ORR (that is already having traffic well beyond its designed capacity) as that is again parallel infrastructure!
However, when road capacity doesn’t suffice, or is expected to become saturated, additional capacity must be created but road widening is not the answer – Mass transit is the answer.
Bangalore has already grown till Yelahanka & beyond & definitely needs metro till there, even as of now for sure. The stretch between Yelahanka to Trumpet Interchange is just another 12km (excluding the 5km after the turnoff to airport at Trumpet Interchange).
I think it makes sense to take the Metro route through Airport road as that is where there are huge developments shaping up. By the time the Airport metro route is built & becomes operational, even the 12km between Yelahanka & Trumpet may already need Metro as further road expansion is undesirable.
One other thing – BMRC may not operate every train all the way till Airport from Silkboard. They will most likely operate all trains at higher frequency only till Yelahanka & every 3rd or 4th train till Airport. Thus, fewer trains may run all the way till Airport.
Based on growth, they may keep extending trains beyond Yelahanka.