ECRL Finishes Excavation Of 30 Tunnels Ahead Of Schedule

The East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project made three tunnel breakthroughs in a single day in the Bentong district, and as of now, it has finished excavating 30 tunnels along its rail alignment.

The owner of the ECRL project, Malaysia Rail Link Sdn Bhd (MRL), stated in a statement on Tuesday that the "drill and blast" method of tunnelling was used to excavate three ECRL tunnels Bentong, Kampung Lentang, and Kampung Lentang 2 earlier than expected.

With 30 tunnel breakthroughs, MRL Chief Executive Officer Datuk Seri Darwis Abdul Razak announced that the ECRL project has reached a new milestone.

As of February 2024, the ECRL project had made an overall progress of 62.40 percent, according to Darwis. This progress was supported by quick infrastructure work, such as tunnel excavation, beam launching, track laying, and station construction.

He continued by saying that about 23,000 workers at roughly 1,900 work sites spread across the states of Selangor, Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan support the project.

The railway track's maximum gradient of 0.9% should be met by the construction of ECRL tunnels in the Bentong district, which should also greatly reduce open forest cutting and lessen the area's impact on wildlife.

Along its rail alignment, the ECRL project entails the construction of 41 tunnels totaling about 69 km in length. There are twenty tunnels in Section C (Mentakab-Port Klang), and twenty more in Section A (Kota Bharu-Dungun) and Section B (Dungun-Mentakab).

Of the 41 tunnels along the ECRL alignment, nine tunnels in Section C and all 21 tunnels in Sections A and B have finished excavation as of August 2023. The remaining tunnels are still under construction.