Highway, rail ministries plan to build three rail-cum road tunnels

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NEW DELHI: In a first-of-its-kind move, the highways and railway ministries have come on board to take up construction of rail-cum-road tunnels on corridors of strategic importance. The two ministries plan to build such tunnels for the Northeast Chicken Neck corridor, across the river Brahmaputra in Assam and on the Maranahally-Addahole (Shiradi Ghat) stretch in Karnataka.TOI has learnt that top officials from railway and road ministries recently held a detailed discussion on the three projects and agreed to take up feasibility studies for them immediately.Earlier, the Cabinet secretariat had directed both the ministries to jointly work on building road-cum-railway tunnels. Following this, a joint working group (JWG) was constituted to assess the feasibility of such common transport infrastructure for integrated planning and cost-effective implementation.At the meeting, sources said, the Northeast Frontier Railway shared details of a new line of the Dumdangi-Rangapani-Bagdogra section and the proposed alignment, which includes construction of a 22-km tunnel. Simultaneously, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has finalised the alignment for the Gorakhpur-Siliguri Expressway project. Officials said that considering the strategic importance of the Chicken’s Neck region, both the ministries agreed to look at the possibility of linking the expressway with the proposed rail alignment and utilising the proposed railway tunnel for combined use.In the case of the Maranahally-Addahole (Shiradi Ghat) corridor, NHAI representatives shared the alignments for both NH-75 corridors passing through Shiradi Ghat in Karnataka. The highway is projected to have 21 km of tunnels, with the longest being 16 km in length. The NHAI has been directed to finalise the feasibility of the rail-cum-road tunnel in the next two months.Sources said the ministries have also agreed to assess the feasibility of building an underwater rail-cum-road tunnel across river Brahmaputra to connect Gohpur and Numaligarh in Assam. The railways and National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) will carry out a pre-feasibility study for the purpose in the next two months.Experts say that such integrated transport infrastructure reduces construction costs by sharing tunnelling works, ventilation systems, emergency escape routes and control systems. Secondly, it requires lower maintenance and operation costs because of shared personnel, monitoring, and infrastructure. In addition, it causes less disturbance to ecosystems.