Metro bears new year gifts for city

The Delhi Metro achieved yet another milestone on Wednesday after it made its first tunnel breakthrough at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, a key venue for Commonwealth Games.

The Delhi Metro achieved yet another milestone on Wednesday after it made its first tunnel breakthrough at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, a key venue for Commonwealth Games.

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The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) completed the 586-metre-long tunnel between Jangpura and the JLN stadium in a period of over three months using a state-of-the-art tunnel boring machine (TBM).

The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Metro station will provide connectivity from the main Games venue to other parts of Delhi.

The JLN stadium metro station falls under the nearly 20-km long Central Secretariat-Badarpur corridor, which will have 16 stations. The corridor, which would have both under-ground and elevated lines, is scheduled to be completed by September 2010, DMRC spokesperson Anuj Dayal said.

The giant TBM was lowered in Jangpura shaft on September 9 last year and started tunnelling around 15-16 metre below the surface from October 13.

The DMRC has also deployed TBMs at the Udyog Bhawan-Khan Market stretch of the same route. Tunnelling in the area is expected to be completed by August this year.

A total of 14 TBMs are being deployed to complete the 30-km of underground section of the second phase of the Delhi Metro.

"It is for the first time in any Indian city and perhaps for any Asian city that so many TBMs will be used simultaneously," Dayal said.