In India, cheaper tunneling technology would be a boon the impossibly chaotic cities. Acquiring private properties to build urban metro transit systems is prohibitively expensive and so is tunneling.
A cheaper tunneling technology would be very much solving plenty of transit problems in a country like India.
I hear TBMs are just crazy expensive. They used two TBMs for the Bangalore Metro. One broke down and it took them months to fix it.
As of now cheaper tunneling tech would be the greatest thing ever for may cities in non developed countries.
I'm surprised they used tbm in Bangalore, but I think tbm aren't required. Cut and cover works well and is primarily used
For example, Mumbai Metro's line 3 is totally underground, and is in the costliest City of India. It is planned at 3.5 billion $ for 33 know. Around 100 million $ per km. And this includes the cost of stations, rails etc.
In comparison, recently completed Delhi metro phase 4 took 6.7 billion $ for 100 km at 67 million $ a km. A proposed Delhi metro project to UP outside the city (and hence cheaper) is around 1 billion $ for 35 km (and fewer stations).
From the looks of it, I don't think cut and cover for making tunnels has any significant expense at all.
It looks like India can construct metros (including stations which are the bigger costs) at 30 million $ per km. This is far lower than the tunneling costs of 100 million $ per mile that Elon plans to achieve, and 1 billion $ / mile that he thinks it costs (it doesn't, the major cost is stations and labor, and he can't bypass unions with political access).
A TBM costs like 10 million euros to buy, 5 million euros per month to operate. And move 50 feet a day. So, all combined it costs like 14 million dollars per mile to tunnel. But as in Mumbai's case (17 tbm for 33 km!), These are done in parallel for speed and to reduce costs, it's sound 30 million dollars per km. Which is almost the difference for mixed grade Delhi phase 4 and Mumbai's line 3 costs.
TLDR: tunnel boring costs 15 million dollars per km in material/operation costs, rest is probably rails+stations etc.
Mumbai and Delhi comparisons are pointless. They get whatever funds they ask from the center. At the same time for cities like Bangalore, they have to work with leftovers.
People complain the pace of Metro construction is low. But for the money these people get, its already nothing short of a miracle that they are even building this much.
The question isn't Mumbai vs Delhi. It is how costly is tunneling.
And I'm just pointing out that in India we are tunneling at around 10-15 million dollars per mile, far cheaper than what Elon musk thinks it costs (1 billion per mile), and what he plans to achieve (100 million dollars per mile). Essentially, the breakdown is complex and different for different geology, labor prices, tunnel sizes etc. Musk's salesmanship of selling byte sized numbers without context is stupid.
A cheaper tunneling technology would be very much solving plenty of transit problems in a country like India.
I hear TBMs are just crazy expensive. They used two TBMs for the Bangalore Metro. One broke down and it took them months to fix it.
As of now cheaper tunneling tech would be the greatest thing ever for may cities in non developed countries.