Chennai: Bright fiery sparks fall from the tower above as workers hang on safety wires and work 10 metres above the ground. The elevated corridor of Chennai metro rail starting from airport towards Meenambakkam is in its construction phase. It is late in the night and a trailer has just come in with a 40-tonne segment which will be lifted up to the pillars and fixed. On the opposite side of the metro work site, Chennai international airport hums with passenger activity.
Santosh Gowda, oversees work as manager of the site. The elevated stretch he is handling starts at the airport and ends at OTA. He says, “The night allows a faster pace of work. The trucks which otherwise are not allowed to ply in the city, can come with the load and it also becomes easy to manage with less traffic on the nearby roads.”The segments or concrete slabs connect two pillars, each of them customised and made a month before being brought to the site. The metro train will be running on these slabs. At the site, there are only 12 workers, all of them skilled and with previous experience with metro work in other cities.
Santosh says that the work cannot be done by unskilled workers. He himself was involved in the Delhi and Bengaluru metro work. The segments are lifted from the trailer by the launcher. The launcher is the large blue machine seen perched on the towers on elevated metro corridors in the city. The machines pick up the segments and hold them as workers join it to the other segments. The entire operation of taking the segment up takes 35 minutes.
The pace of work of late has been good, say workers; usually, a span, meaning a distance between two pillars, is completed in three days, which is good. Work delays usually occur due to machine failures, be it an oil spill or jacks breaking. Workers have to be extra careful, given the situation of hanging above the ground and handling heavy machinery. Safety is a priority and an ambulance is kept at standby at all times.
The team is awaiting another launcher to join work which will begin from the other end.All through national highway 45 from the airport towards Guindy the work continues as trailers keep moving with large blocks and launchers haul them up, making way for the city metro.
