In our previous article, we explored the "15-Minute Dream." We learned how the new Thane-Borivali Twin Tunnel will soon change our daily lives. It will finally end those long, tiring traffic jams on Ghodbunder Road. But building an 11.8-kilometer road deep under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park is not easy. How exactly do you dig a massive tunnel through solid rock without hurting the forest? You need a giant, powerful tool. For Thane, that superhero machine is named "Nayak." What is Nayak? Nayak is a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). Think of it as a massive, high-tech earthworm made of steel. Built by a German engineering company, Nayak is a true record-breaker. It is the largest hard rock TBM ever used for a city road tunnel in India. The sheer size of this machine is hard to imagine. The entire machine is 86 meters long. The round cutting shield at the very front is over 13 meters wide. To picture this size, just imagine a standard four-story building spinning around!...
If you live in Thane, you know the daily struggle of traffic on Ghodbunder Road. Traveling to Borivali can easily take up to one and a half hours. But soon, this tiring journey will change forever. The upcoming Thane-Borivali Twin Tunnel project will shrink this travel time to just 15 minutes. Here is everything a common citizen needs to know about this massive project. Project Overview This project is an 11.8-kilometer (10.25 km tunnel & 1.6 km approach) road linking Tikuji-Ni-Wadi in Thane directly to the Western Express Highway in Borivali. Instead of going all the way around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), the road will go straight under it. It will be a "twin tunnel". This means there are two separate tunnels for traffic going in opposite directions. Technical Details Each of the two tunnels will be massive. They will have three lanes each. Two lanes are for regular traffic, and one is reserved for emergencies. To dig these tunnels, the builders are using gi...