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| East-West Metro project to be completed by 2014 |
| BS Reporter / Kolkata Feb 23, 2009, 00:14 IST |
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Continuing with his heavy-weight infrastructure projects announcement over the past one week, West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, today laid the foundation stone of the Rs 4874.58 crore East-West Metro corridor project, the first such transportation project in the country running under a major river.
The underground corridor starts from Howrah Station and will cross the river Hooghly at a depth of 60 feet from the water level. The proposal to extend the metro alignment up to Howrah Maidan from Howrah Station covering an additional length of 900 meters at an additional cost of Rs198.58 crore was sanctioned by the Centre's committee of empowered ministers last Thursday. Government of India is funding Rs1,169 crore for the project through equity and subordinated debt, while the state government is spending around Rs1,452.58 crore and the remaining Rs2,253 crore is coming from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as senior term debt loan.
The 13.77 kilometer(km) long East-West Metro corridor would run from Salt Lake Sector V, the IT hub of the city, up to Howrah Maidan. Of this, around 8 km is underground with six stations and the balance 5.77 km will be on an elevated track. There would be 12 stations in all that would connect the city's Central Business District(CBD), Dalhousie, with a station near the Secretariat(Writers' Building) with the extreme eastern and western fringes.
"The Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation(KMRC) has been been registered as a joint venture company with equal equity participtation from the Centre and the state government in July last year," Bhattacharjee said. "It has already started issuing work orders and tenders," he added. Tender for the six km elevated corridor at Salt Lake was awarded to Gammon India Ltd on February 20, informed Sumantra Chowdhury, state transport secretary and also the managing director of KMRC."Work would start in a fortnight's time. We have also appointed a Hong Kong-based consortium as project consultants, and with their help we plan to issue tenders for the 9km long underground tunnel by September this year," Chowdhury said adding that the KMRC was keen to ready the stretch between Salt Lake to Sealdah by 2012. The deadline for completion of the entire project is October 2014.
Net land requirement for the metro corridor is around 22.6 Hectares(Ha), of which 21.52 Ha is government land and the remaining 1.08 Ha is private land. "The number of project-affected persons is 432, and a rehabilitation plan has already been finalised for them," Bhattacharjee said.
The base fare for the East-West Metro corridor is Rs8 and would go up to Rs16 depending on distance travelled. Nearly 23,000 passengers are expected to travel on the route everyday and the number would go up to 5 lakh commuters in a year. Initially, there would be one train every 3.5 minutes, and eventually the frequency would increase up to one train every 2.5 minutes by 2031.
Addressing the meet, External Affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced that Kolkata would get 1,200 new buses with funding help from the Centre. Of these, 900 would be low-floor and the remaining semi-low floor buses. "The Centre would bear Rs125 crore of the total cost of Rs365 crore for these buses, and the rest would come from different agencies.", Mukherjee said. Also, Asansol would also have 100 new buses at a cost of Rs 22 crore. Centre would fund around Rs11 crore.
Incidentally, the chief minister was shown black flags by women activists of Trinamool Congress when he was arriving at Salt Lake Stadium for the foundation stone laying ceremony today.Members of the women's wing of Bidhannagar Block Trinamool Congress alleged that the foundation stone laying programme was a ploy to woo voters ahead of the general elections.
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