Pune to start with underground metro?

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE- From Does Pune need Metro? to when will the metro start? Pune MahaMetro have always been surrounded with controversies. There were many activists protesting against construction and the route for creating noise and air pollution and also disturbing the biological diversity around the river banks.

And now, the activists have got yet another reason to object. MahaMetro has appointed Turkish company Gulermak and Tata for the civil work of building the underground metro work. Atul Gadgil, Executive Director of Pune Metro project, said that Phase II of the underground metro work has been awarded to the two companies, who have good experience in this field.

Gulermak is one of the leading engineering and construction companies in Turkey, specialising in implementation of turnkey projects for the public transport sector such as construction of railway infrastructure, underground tunnels, and subway stations.

“Gulermak has also been working on Lucknow metro. The staff mobilisation of the company has already been started. Gulermak has good experience in tunnelling and their project manager is already on the field,” Gadgil said.

Gadgil also explained that the tunnel rings will be made in the casting yard and once the tunnel boring machines (TBM) arrive, they will be kept in the casting yard. The companies are in process of conducting the geotechnical investigation and topographical survey. The TBM machines are expected to reach by September. It will take about six months before any physical work for the underground metro can be seen. The TBM costs around Rs 50 crore and drills about 7m/day. The companies are in process of designing the tunnels.

In the recent development of metro, the state government said the Metro rail operational constructions should be excluded from development permission for faster implementation of the Metro network. Accordingly, the state government proposed a special provision for Metro Rail Constructions in the Development Control (DC) regulations of the municipal corporations.