ITD Cem Casts Chennai Metro Line-4’s 1st Tunnel Segment

ITD Cementation India Ltd. on Monday began pouring concrete to cast their very first tunnel ring segment for constructing Chennai Metro Line-4’s 10 km underground section between Power House Ramp – Light House Station.

Their yard in Muthukadu along ECR road will be used to cast approximately 9000 tunnel ring segments for constructing the 118.9 km Chennai Metro Phase 2 project’s 5.15 km Package UG-01 (Bharathidasan Road Station to Light House) and 4.877 km Package UG-02 (Kodambakkam Flyover Station to Bharathidasan Road Station).

Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) had awarded ITD with both package’s civil contracts in January 2022 for a combined contract value of Rs. 3743.24 crore and 48 month deadline.

Casting Molds – Copoyright: Arjun Dhotre

Chennai Metro’s twin tunnels will have a 5.6 meter internal diameter. The first segment cast on Monday will be utilized on UG-1.

CMRL’s official Phase 2 map with my edits showcasing package UG-01 between Bharathidasan Road Station to Light House Station – view Phase 2 info & route map

Here are some snaps via Arjun Dhotre. A tunnel ring is typically 1.4 m wide, and consists of 5 segments + 1 ‘key’ segment.

Concrete pour in progress
Smoothening…
Cheers!

Here’s a roughly 4 month old image from Tata Projects’ yard in Kosapur with tunnel segments lined up for the 45.813 Line-3’s tunnels. Tata had commissioned S96 – their first of 7 TBMs in October to bore 9 km twin tunnels (total 18 km) for Package TU-01 (Venugopal Nagar – Kellys). ITD’s yard in Muthuadu will look quite similar in the coming months.

Photo via Ananya Das

ITD plans to deploy four tunnel boring machines (TBMs). I hear 3 of those will be refurbished from Mumbai Metro Line-3’s Package UGC-04 (Herrenknecht S1073, S1074 and S1075). In addition, a new TBM will be procured from Herrenknecht with all 4 slated to undergo factory acceptance tests in the coming months at Herrenknecht’s plant in Tamil Nadu.

For more updates, check out the Chennai section or my Home Page! Sign up for free instant email notifications on new posts over here. Like this post? Get early-access to updates and support the site over here.

– TMRG

written by

Global traveler who prefers mass rapid transit

2 Responses to "ITD Cem Casts Chennai Metro Line-4’s 1st Tunnel Segment"

  1. Pradeep says:

    With the tenders for the UG stations in hold, do you think we should factor in significant delays now ?

    Reply
    • TMRG says:

      Yup, expect significant delays on Line-3 and Line-5. They’ve rescheduled tender submission deadlines at least 10 times now (from July to Dec). Expecting completion of entire Phase 2 no sooner than 2028 right now.

      Reply

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