After facing undue delay for a year and a half, the Chennai Metro Rail has finally built a tunnel from Purasawalkam to Kellys for the phase 2 project. A combination of residents’ opposition and the protracted delay in building the shaft at Kellys caused a significant setback for tunnelling in this stretch.

The 118.9-km phase 2 project comprising three corridors — Madhavaram to SIPCOT, Light House to Poonamallee, and Madhavaram to Sholinganallur — will link residential neighbourhoods, commercial areas, shopping hubs, IT corridor, and some of the fast-developing suburbs of the city.

Purasawalkam, a dense commercial hub with vibrant street shopping, and Kellys, a rather quiet residential neighbourhood, will be connected by this tunnel under the Madhavaram-SIPCOT corridor.

The tunnelling work for this 300-m-stretch began in December 2024 and was expected to be completed in a couple of months. But the tunnel boring machine (TBM) from Purasawalkam made a breakthrough only recently. Sources said that one of the residents in Kellys fiercely opposed the ongoing work since it created a lot of noise. The increased time taken in building the shaft at Kellys too, contributed to the delay.

Now that the upline tunnel has been built, the work to construct the downline track will commence in the third week of September.

According to officials of the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), both TBMs are usually launched from the same origin point, but will tunnel at a distance of at least 100 metres from each other. “But since the first TBM has already been delayed, we do not want to lose any more time. The TBM, which has arrived at Kellys, will be turned around and will begin boring from Kellys towards Purasawalkam next month. Otherwise, launching a TBM again will cost us another two months,” an official said.

The TBM began boring at Purasawalkam at a depth of 18 metres and gradually started going deeper, officials said. At Kellys, the machine bored and made a breakthrough at a depth of nearly 28 metres. “We had to slowly dig deeper because at Kilpauk Medical College, the phase 2 tunnel is coming up below the phase 1 tunnel. The station after Kellys is Kilpauk Medical College, and hence, we had to make such a transition in depth,” he added.

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Published - August 07, 2026 10:27 pm IST