BENGALURU: In a significant milestone for the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, the first set of U-girders (on which rail tracks are laid) on the only package on the Airport Line where it was pending, was completed on Friday.
To facilitate the process, traffic on this stretch of Outer Ring Road was diverted to the service road last night.
The U-girder pair was laid between piers 110 and 111 on the 10-km K R Puram to Hebbal (Package-1) stretch. The U-girders on Package -2 (Hebbal to IAF Yelahanka) and Package-3 (IAF to KIA) have been launched much earlier.
A senior official said, “We began work at 11.45 pm on Thursday and completed it by 5 am on Friday. The job went on smoothly. These are pre-cast, pre-tensioned concrete girders which were brought from the Hennur yard to be erected here. A U-girder is laid between two piers and it forms a span along with another girder.”
Two cranes, each weighing 500 tonnes were used to facilitate it. Contractor Nagarjuna Construction Company Limited, was carrying out the job under BMRCL supervision. “A total of 660 girders need to be laid in Package-1 alone. After we complete laying the girders for every 3 km which would roughly come to 200 girders, we plan to hand it over to the Track department for laying of tracks,” he said.
"This was possible only because of the excellent support given by the traffic police," the official added.a