India's first underwater metro expected to ready by Dec 2023
1 min read 30 Dec 2022, 10:21 AM ISTIt is worth mentioning that the East-West corridor of the Kolkata Metro is 15 Km-long and spans from Salt Lake Stadium to Howrah.
PremiumIndia's first underwater metro service, the East-West Metro Corridor project is expected to be completed by December 2023, the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) said on Friday.
Shailesh Kumar, General Manager Civil KMRC said, “The ongoing underwater tunnel project is likely to be completed by December 2023. Some rehabilitation works are in process and other issues are delaying the completion of the underwater metro project."
"We have taken foreign experts in tunneling projects, currently we are using machines from abroad (German) to make the difficult task easier," the KMRC official told ANI.
With this, another feather is being added to the crown of Kolkata Metro, the first metro railway in the country. Kolkata Metro, which started its journey in 1984, is being expanded to cover the whole city and its outskirts.
It is worth mentioning that the East-West corridor of the Kolkata Metro is 15 Km-long and spans from Salt Lake Stadium to Howrah. This metro line between Salt Lake Sector-5 to Salt Lake Stadium has Karunamayi, Central Park, City Center and Bengal Chemical metro stations.
It costs about ₹120 crore per kilometre to build the tunnel but the manufacturing cost of the tunnel underwater, which is deep in the Hooghly river costs increased to around 157 crores by per kilometre, as per ANI reports.
Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation has taken up the difficult take of making the tunnel with the help of German machines and the best experts. Work inside the tunnel is still in progress.
The project completion will bring great relief to lakhs of commuters as it will connect the busy Howrah and Sealdah railway stations as well as the north-south line of the Kolkata Metro at Esplanade.
(With ANI inputs)
