TBM Bhadra Starts Tunneling for Bangalore Metro’s Pink Line
ITD Cementation India on Thursday commissioned their first tunnel boring machine, Bhadra (S-840B), at Venkateshpura Station on Bangalore Metro’s 21.386 km Pink Line (Reach 6).
This refurbished Herrenknecht mixed-shield EPB machine, along with its sister machine TBM Tunga (S-839), will build four tunnels each for the 73.92 km Bangalore Metro Phase 2 project’s 4.591 km package RT-04 (Tannery Road – North Ramp) in north Bengaluru.
ITD’s scope of work involves building a combined total of 6.34 km twin tunnels, roughly 360 meter ramp at Nagawara, and four stations at Tannery Road, Venkateshpura, Kadugundanahalli (formerly Arabic College) and Nagawara.
As shared earlier – for its first assignment, both machines will first travel 822.99m south from Venkateshpura to Tannery Road, pass through the station box and tunnel another 209.585m towards a dedicated TBM retrieval shaft.
After its southern assignment, the machines will be brought back to Venkateshpura for tunneling 1172.16m northwards towards Kadugundanahalli and a further 916.709m to Nagawara Station’s TBM retrieval shaft.
A total of 9 TBMs will be deployed by Afcons (3), Larsen & Toubro (4) and ITD Cementation (2) for constructing the city’s Pink Line. With this development – 7 of those have been commissioned and parts of two are being configured for commissioning.
Here’s a status of each machine with figures displayed from BMRCL’s June newsletter which now reveals the names of Afcons’ 3 machines as Rudra, Vamika and Varada. Interestingly, L&T’s TBM Vindhya – working on the Cantonment to Shivajinagar section – has made literally no progress when compared to the May newsletter.
| TBM | Status |
| S-1259 (Rudra) | Commissioned in April 2021 (4/1480 rings erected) |
| S-1260 (Vamika) | Getting configured for commissioning (Parts arrived in December) |
| S-1264 (Varada) | Commissioned in March 2021 (Unknown/596m – “15% completed”) |
| DZ669 (Avni) | Commissioned in Sept 2020 (505.5/1089m) |
| DZ670 (Urja) | Commissioned in July 2020 (478.5/860m) |
| DZ671 (Vindhya) | Commissioned in October 2020 (381/860m) |
| DZ672 (Lavi) | Commissioned in February 2021 (189/1089m) |
| S-839B (Tunga) | Getting configured for commissioning |
| S-840B (Bhadra) | Commissioned in June 2021 (this post!) |
For more updates, check out my Home Page!
– TMRG
Hat-tip: Christin Mathew Philip
Bro, when can we expect remaining two TBM to commission ????
Should happen before August
Who will get tender of gottigere to swagath road and today tender opening date and today tender opened 15:30 and who will get tender pzz update sir
Only technical bids have been opened. I’m trying to source a list of bidders right now. I don’t know who will win – wish I could foretell 🙂
Technical bid evaluation will take a couple months, and financial bids of the qualified ones will be opened. This entire process will take at least another 3 months.
Any idea on the progress of Tunga (S-839B) and Bhadra (S-840B). They have long way to go, infact 4 tunnelling each.
Does ITD Cementation have any plans to deploy additional TBMs ?
443.9/823m and 488.6/823m completed for 1st drive – per BMRCL’s Feb newsletter https://english.bmrc.co.in/FileUploads/58b28b_PressQuesFiles.pdf
No plans to deploy additional machines