Namma Metro close to commencement as tunneling gets over

BENGALURU: The uncertainty is all over…so are the sleepless nights for hundreds of engineers and thousands of workers working day and night to complete the last tunnel of the first phase of Namma Metro project. At 2 pm on a cloudy Friday afternoon, it was Krishna—the fifth tunnel boring machine that popped out at Chikkalabagh side of the Majestic interchange station amidst loud cheers from the BMRCL family.
It took three years and 10 months to drill under KR Market and Chickpet areas, a total of 1.57 km and the challenges were unending.Even during June when its counterpart Kaveri achieved breakthrough at this junction, the corporation estimated the machine to pop out by end of August but it encountered many hard rocks and natural streams of water that gushed inside.
Madhav Mahato, one of the tunnel workers said life wasn’t easy under. “It was hotter and full of dust and rocks. Breathing is harder and the soil kept throwing challenges at us every now and then. But we continued because every time the tunnel achieved a breakthrough, our pride and happiness was beyond words can describe,” he said.
BMRCL MD Pradeep Singh Kharola said, “This marks the beginning of the commissioning of the first phase of the project. Hereon, our calculations will be perfect and we can adhere to the timeline set. By January end, the civil works inside the tunnels connecting north-south lines will be completely ready for trials. And in the next 45 days or so, we can start trials in the RV Road—Jayanagar—Puttenahalli (southern) line.”