Construction on India’s highly-publicized High-Speed Rail Project, which will enable bullet trains to run between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, finally began on Thursday after a protracted delay.
As part of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor, tunnel construction for the double line between Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) and Shilphata in Maharashtra has begun.
The Mumbai Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor will only have one underground station, and that station is the BKC station, on which construction began on Thursday.
According to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail project, 21 km out of a total of 508.17 km of rail track is planned to be underground while the rest will be elevated.
The tunnel will ensure the protection of the bird sanctuary and mangroves around Thane creek.
“A dedicated skylight provision has also been made with this station to keep it under natural light.” said a railway official involved in the execution of the project. Another interesting part of this project is that a 21 km long tunnel including seven undersea tunnels using Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) and New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATMA) will be made between BKC and Shilphata in Maharashtra.
“The seven km undersea tunnel at Thane Creek will be the first undersea tunnel to come up in the country as a single tube tunnel to accommodate with a track for both up and down tracks,” said the railway here.
The tunnel will be about 25-65 meters deep from the ground level and the deepest construction point will be 114m below the Parsik hill near Shilphata in Maharashtra. To construct this tunnel, India is using the world’s latest technologies like the New Austrian Tunnelling Method.
The tender for this was invited on September 23 in 2022 and finally opened on February 9- a day before the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday to flag off the two new rakes of Vande Bharat trains here.
On March 15, 2023, the construction tenders for the civil and building works involving a viaduct, bridges, tunnels, and maintenance depot with three stations—Virar, Thane, and Boisar—were opened, according to officials camped out at the BKC station site in Mumbai, the first underground station of the bullet train project from the Mumbai side.
With the change of power in Maharashtra, works primarily related to land acquisition took a pace and now 98.79% land required for the project on the Maharashtra side has been acquired.
A senior railway official told TNIE that Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw continued monitoring this project and works related to land acquisition in Maharashtra with the state government.
Hardly a day passed when our minister did not inquire about works with Maharashtra government officials. This project is attached with the vision of PM Narendra Modi”, remarked the railway official.
A railway official said that 100% of contracts for civil, bridges and tracks construction of the viaduct, bridges stations and tracks for the entire alignment in Gujarat and Dadra-Nagar Haveli have been awarded. In Mumbai, the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) station of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor will be the only underground station.
“Look at this site, works are being started and we have exhibited designs and details related to this station and project here as a mark of auspices beginning,” said an official in Mumbai, adding that BKC station will have 6 platforms to accommodate 16-coaches of bullet train with proper connectivity with metro and road.”