mumbai

Updated: Apr 14, 2019 21:17 IST

The work on Metro-3 (Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ), the city’s only fully-underground corridor, is speeding through its underbelly with the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) completing 45% of tunnelling works and nine out of 32 tunnel breakthroughs till March-end. A breakthrough is when a tunnel boring machine manages to bore through the designated route, from one end to the other.

Being built at a cost of ₹23,136 crore, the 33.5-km Metro-3 corridor is expected to ease travelling woes for Mumbaiites by connecting the island city to the western suburbs. The first phase of the corridor — from Aarey to Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) — is likely to be operational by 2021. The second phase is from BKC to Cuffe Parade.

According to a report by MMRCL, which is executing the project, 23.69km of the 52-km tunnelling work for the Metro-3 corridor has been completed as of March-end. The MMRCL has deployed 17 tunnel boring machines in the city for the job, which have so far excavated 31 lakh metric tonnes of earth.

The tunnelling work for Metro-3 corridor has been divided into seven packages to complete the sections simultaneously and work has started on all of them, an official from MMRCL said. For instance, in package 5 — between Dharavi and Agripada — 4,744m of the 7,992m tunnelling has been completed so far, while in package 4 — Worli to Dharavi station— 6,267m of 10,960m has been finished, the report stated.

In March, the tunnel boring machine Godavari-1 covered a distance of 2.9kms at the domestic airport Metro station. The breakthrough was achieved in 455 days. HT has earlier reported that the Metro-3 line will be the second corridor in the country to have tunnels under a riverbed, with two tunnels of 1.18km long to be built 12.5m below the Mithi riverbed.