বাংলায় পড়ুন
A tunnel boring machine (TBM) of the East West (E-W) Metro project was stuck under Nirmal Chandra Street after the project came to a halt following an incident of subsidence in Bowbazar area on August 31. The East West Metro project stopped after a tunnel boring machine digging one of the two tunnels for the East-West corridor had hit an aquifer under Bowbazar area on August 31 which triggered a large-scale subsidence due to which many buildings developed cracks and hundreds of residents of those buildings had to be relocated.
The TBM which was digging the other tunnel too stopped operating after the incident and had been lying underground since then. It moved for the first time since the project came to a halt after Calcutta High Court earlier this week gave permission to Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation to move the machine five metres for maintenance purposes. British engineer John Endicott, who has decades of experience in boring tunnels currently heads a technical committee assigned by the court to suggest whether the machine could be moved or not. He said, “We moved the machine four metres and built three rings of the tunnel. Initially, there were problems in some gadgets. Those were fixed. The problems occurred because the machine had been lying idle for so long. The four-metre journey was completed after midnight. We are closely monitoring the area and there is no significant soil settlement”. Endicott added, “The machine will now be overhauled for its longer journey to Sealdah and back. Once we are satisfied about the machine’s overhauling, we’ll approach the high court seeking permission for tunnel boring”. Engineers of the E-W Metro too have reported that this movement of one of the TBMs did not trigger any significant settlement.
