For tunnel road tech, BBMP engineers visit Vizag, set to land in Kashmir next
BENGALURU: A team from the engineers' wing of BBMP has started visiting other Indian cities where tunnel road projects are being executed. This is to assess and adopt the best practices to execute the first phase of the 18-km-long tunnel road in Bengaluru.
The cabinet on June 5, 2025 approved the construction of the north-south tunnel road corridor under the Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) model. Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru in-charge minister DK Shivakumar has been insisting on the project, claiming that it will decongest the city. The first phase will be taken up at a cost of Rs 17,000 crore.
The team recently visited Visakhapatnam to study the New Australian Tunnelling Method (NATM) that is being used by the NHAI to build the 464-km tunnel road reaching Raipur. The BBMP team is going next to Kashmir to understand the tunnel projects there.
'We went to Vizag to understand NATM, the land required and the time it takes as compared to other regular methods. The existing technology used by BMRCL cannot be adopted for the road project as the diameter of the tunnel boring machine for the Metro rail project is 5.6 metre, while the road project requires at least 14.6 metre,' BBMP Chief Engineer BS Prahalad told TNIE.
Understanding different models is essential when executing the project in Bengaluru, where land acquisition and cost is a concern, he said. 'We need to understand each of the tunnelling methods before coming to a conclusion. So far nothing has been finalised,' he added.
The visits and the preparatory work is going on at a time when citizens and experts have demanded that the project be dropped and the public transport system be strengthened. They pointed out that what is being done in other cities cannot be replicated here without a thorough analysis. BBMP sources said that instead of studying the technology, the engineering team should look at the feasibility and requirements of other cities and compare them to Bengaluru. But that is not being done, they added.
Prof Ashish Verma, a mobility expert from IISc, said, 'Studies and various models prepared by us have shown that public transport is better when compared to the tunnel road. It is not a feasible project in the long run.'
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