Namma Metro: Entire 21.25 Km Stretch Of Gottigere-Nagawara Pink Line To Open In March 2025, BMRCL Reports 72% Tunnelling Work Completion

With over 72% of tunnel work completed, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) has announced that the 21.25 km Pink line of Namma Metro will be commissioned by March 2025.

In an official statement, BMRCL said that 15.210 km out of 21.245 km of tunnelling work had been completed.

The Pink line Of Phase 2 of Namma Metro will connect Kalena Agrahara station (previously called Gottigere) on Bannerghatta road in the southern city of the city with Nagawara on Outer Ring Road on the north side. The Pink Line is predominantly an underground network (14 km) with 7 km of elevated line.

The Pink line will have an interchange with the Purple Line at M.G. Road station. The Pink line will have interchanges with the soon-to-be commissioned Yellow line (Electronics City to R.V. Road) at Jayadeva Hospital station and under construction Blue Line (Central Silk Board To Bengaluru International Airport) at Nagawara.

Tunnelling Work Progress

BMRCL has deployed nine tunnel boring machines (TBMs) for building the 14 km (cumulative length of twin tunnels is 21.245 km) underground portion of the Pink line.

TBM Lavi on Wednesday achieved a breakthrough by completing its drive at Rashtriya Military School station (Vellara Junction). Five of the nine TBMs - Urja, Varada, Avni and now Lavi- have completed the boring operations.

"TBM Lavi, which started its tunnelling at Shivajinagar on March 26, 2021 achieved a breakthrough at MG Road station after completing 1074m of tunnelling on April 15, 2022. It further started tunnelling from MG Road on May 26, 2022 and completed the drive on Wednesday up to RMS (Vellara) station covering a tunnel length of 1134m," the official press release from BMRCL said.

The press release added that TBM Vindhya, which is cutting through from Pottery Town station to Shaadi Mahal shaft, is expected to complete the drive by the end of this month.

"This underground section (of the Pink Line) has been divided into four contract packages and nine TBMs have been deployed for completing this tunnelling work. Out of this, three TBMs: Urja, Varada & Avni have already completed their designated length of tunnelling. Lavi is the fourth TBM to complete its drive," it said.

"With this, all the four TBMs deployed by L&T complete their work and the tunnelling of two packages will be completed. With the UG station works progressing well, the BMRCL has planned to complete and commission 21.30 km of Reach-6 (Pink Line) by end of March 2025," BMRCL stated.

Afcons Infrastructure is executing the other package - a 3.65 km underground portion from Dairy Circle Ramp to Rashtriya Military School.

In October last year, Rudra, one of the TBMs deployed by Afcons, was stuck for a reason after encountering a massive pile of garbage (plastic buckets, tyres, bags, disintegrating bones etc.) underground at a depth of 33 feet from the surface. Local authorities attributed it as a quarry land that was converted into a dumping site. The dumping site was later filled with debris and sand before turning into a housing area.