L&T Casts Patna Museum – Bihar Museum Tunnel’s 1st Segment

Larsen & Toubro today began pouring concrete to cast the first batch of tunnel ring segments for constructing a 1.5 km pedestrian tunnel connecting Patna Museum and Bihar Museum in Patna, Bihar.

This unique project under Patna Metro Phase 1‘s Package PC-08R involves construction of a subway connecting both museums, between Bailey Road and Chajju Bagh, by a 8.2 meter diameter tunnel boring machine (TBM) at a depth of 16.5 meters.

L&T’s casting yard for PC-08R is located on Bans Ghat Road in Dujra Diara neighborhood. From here they’ll cast 800 tunnel rings tunnels comprising of 6 segments + 1 smaller ‘key’ segment. Each segment will be 1.8m wide and have a thickness of 325mm.

To give you an idea of its size, the 82 km Delhi – Meerut RAPIDX project’s recently completed tunnels were built using 7.51m diameter TBMs – see images here.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had awarded L&T with Package PC-08R’s Rs. 374.12 crore contract in December 2023 with a 900 day deadline.

I hear L&T will deploy a brand new TBM (ZTE8150) manufactured by CRCHI which is expected to reach Patna by October-end. The machine in 2025 will be launched from Bihar Museum and get retrieved from Patna Museum.

This air-conditioned tunnel will serve as an art gallery and be equipped with battery-operated golf carts. The entry/exit structures on either side will include a security checkpoint, goods lift (service elevator) and restrooms.

Here are a few renderings shared by DMRC in the past:

ABS Aircon Engineers in June was awarded a Rs. 36.07 crore contract to install Electrical & Mechanical (E&M) and other systems within the tunnel under Package PE-09.

As shared in the past – twin tunnels of Patna Metro’s 16.86 km Line-1 (Danapur Cantonment – Khemni Chak) will pass underneath this pedestrian tunnel on Bailey Road with a vertical clearance of 6.5m.

Those tunnels will be built via civil packages PC-05 & PC-06. From the original submission deadline of February 13, the submission deadline has now been pushed out to July 22 with technical bids scheduled to open on the next day. Stay tuned!

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– TMRG