45% tunnelling work for Mumbai Metro-3 completed

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 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.

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. (HT File)

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.