Metro Railway GM inspects E-W Metro route ahead of inauguration
Kolkata: Metro Railway general manager Manoj Joshi, along with senior officers of Metro Railway and Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Limited (KMRCL) inspected the East-West Metro stretch from Salt Lake Sector V to Salt Lake Stadium on Wednesday, a week ahead of its inauguration.
He travelled from Salt Lake Sector V to Salt Lake stadium in a Metro and inspected the condition of railway track, signaling system, booking counters, functioning of screen doors, ticket gates, escalators and lifts at stations.
It might be mentioned that after missing several deadlines, the much-awaited first phase of East West Metro is now slated to be inaugurated on February 13.
Expressing his satisfaction after seeing the preparations for the inaugural run, Joshi said: "The E-W Metro will be able to fulfill the expectations of the commuters and become a fast and comfortable mode of transport."
The first phase of the East-West Metro is a five kilometre stretch between Salt Lake Sector V and Salt Lake Stadium, including Karunamoyee, Central Park, City Centre and Bengal Chemical stations.
KMRCL is implementing the East-West Metro project from Salt Lake Sector V to Howrah Maidan, covering a distance of 16.5 kilometres.
The inauguration date was finalised after Commission of Railway Safety inspected the first phase of the East-West Metro stretch that went through five rounds of trial runs, starting in October 2019.
According to officials, Railway minister Piyush Goyal will
unveil the first phase of East-West Metro.
The fare structure will be Rs 5 for 0-2 km and Rs 10 for 2-5 km. The trains will run at an interval of 20 minutes. There will be 37 pairs of trains running between Salt Lake Sector V and Salt Lake Stadium.
The path of the East-West Metro will be over the ground from Salt Lake Sector V till Subhas Sarobar and will then go underground. In the entire stretch, around 520 metres of tunneling has been done underneath river Hooghly.
The tunnel boring work was stopped as the buildings in Bowbazar area developed structural damage following subsidence on August 31.
The first phase of the East-West corridor of Kolkata Metro was earlier scheduled to see its inauguration in 2012. Due to land acquisition issues, slum relocation and route alignment, the construction work got delayed.
