The Madrid authorities have begun work on assembling the Mayrit TBM, the giant machine that will excavate the new section of Metro Line 11—one of the most ambitious urban infrastructure investments currently underway in the Spanish capital. The president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, attended the official ceremony, describing the new drilling machine as “a world benchmark in underground excavation technology.”
The TBM, built over 20 months in Germany, will start operating in March 2025, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It will advance at an average speed of 15 meters per day as part of the extension project between the Comillas and Conde de Casal stations.
The project is progressing: 43% of the work has already been completed
The current extension of Line 11 includes five new stations: two completely new ones (Comillas and Madrid Río) and three interchange stations (Palos de la Frontera, Atocha, and Conde de Casal). According to regional authorities, 43% of the work has already been completed.
The new infrastructure is designed to:
- reduce congestion on Line 6, one of the busiest lines on the Madrid metro;
- improve north-south mobility in the capital;
- facilitate connections to train stations and areas of interest in southern Madrid.
Advanced technology for difficult terrain
Each component of the Mayrit TBM (the Arabic name for Madrid) has been designed to cope with the specific geotechnical conditions in Madrid, characterized by hard rock, compact gravel, and black clay.
The cutting wheel is equipped with dozens of milling discs and abrasive elements arranged in such a way that it can efficiently perforate the variable soil. The excavated material is then collected and automatically transported via a 6-kilometer conveyor belt, designed to continuously evacuate waste to the surface.
This technology allows the TBM to advance approximately 15 meters per day, an incomparable performance compared to the traditional manual digging method (digging with pickaxes and shovels), which only allowed about 10 meters per month.
The TBM will only need to stop to replace worn components, approximately once every 1,000 meters excavated.
A large-scale logistical operation
The machine is being assembled at a depth of 27 meters, exactly where the new tunnels for Line 11 will be located. Transporting the 98-meter-long, 1,500-ton Mayrit TBM required complex planning, involving over 2,000 km of road and sea transport.
To build the tunnel, the authorities will use:
- 32,000 tons of steel
- 210,000 cubic meters of concrete
This is only the first stage of a much larger project: the extension of Line 11 to 33 km and 20 stations, transforming it, according to the authorities, into the future “backbone” of the Madrid Metro network.
Parallel investments in the metro network
In addition to the extension of Line 11, Madrid has other major projects planned for 2024:
- The reopening of Line 7B, after extensive reinforcement work.
- The opening of the L3 section to El Casar, which provides a direct link to the MetroSur network.
- The start of the extension of Line 5 to Barajas Airport.
Share on:
