CHENNAI: Chennai Metro has completed both the upline and downline underground tunnels on a critical stretch of Corridor-4 of its Phase-II network, marking a key construction milestone beneath some of Chennai’s most congested and sensitive urban precincts.
The breakthrough of the downline tunnel was achieved on Friday when the tunnel boring machine (TBM) Flamingo S-1352A emerged at the Thirumayilai shaft, completing the 1.98-km drive between Light House and Thirumayilai.
This followed the earlier completion of the upline tunnel on February 9 by TBM Eagle under the same UG-01 contract.
Executed by Cemindia Projects Limited, the twin tunnels pass beneath the Lighthouse area, the All India Radio campus, Russian Embassy zone, Rosary Church, MRTS bridge and the Buckingham Canal — an alignment that required engineers to work through rocky strata, shallow cover, deep overburden caused by stacked tunnel configurations and unforeseen gas pockets.
With both tunnels now in place, CMRL has cleared a major bottleneck on Corridor-4, a line expected to substantially improve connectivity across Mylapore, Luz, and Central Chennai upon commissioning.
The Apollo Hospital facilitated transport of the lungs and heart of a 17-year-old boy who was declared brain dead from the Chennai Airport to DMS metro station via a dedicated Chennai metro train operated for organ transfer on Friday.
The metro travel time was 9 minutes, and it took 16 more minutes to get to the hospital from the airport. The organs reached the hospital in record time, stated a release.
The heart and lungs were retrieved from the Government Rajaji Hospital and transported from the Madurai airport to Chennai. In another case, lungs were transported from Tiruchy to Chennai after police created a specially-coordinated green corridor. The donated organs have given a new lease of life to three patients.