India to get its 1st under-river metro station in Kolkata tomorrow
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be inaugurating India’s first under-river metro tunnel in Kolkata on Wednesday (6 March). The metro tunnel has been built under Kolkata’s Hooghly River that will connect Howrah Maidan to Esplanade.
Prime Minister Modi will also inaugurate in Kolkata the Kavi Subhash-Hemanta Mukhopadhyay and the Taratala-Majerhat metro sections, “with a focus on enhancing avenues for ensuring ease of urban mobility”.
Kolkata Metro joins elite club of London, Moscow, Munich metros with this system
Kolkata Metro’s Howrah Maidan-Esplanade section is touted to be the first transportation tunnel “under any mighty river in India”. The Howrah metro station is also the deepest in India.
The Howrah Maidan-Esplanade section passes under the River Hooghly, on the east and west banks of which are situated Kolkata and Howrah City.
How Kolkata is creating history with India’s first underwater metro- Explained
Kolkata Metro created history in April 2023, when its rake ran through a tunnel under a river, the Hooghly, for the first time in the country.
The 4.8 km stretch between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade is the second section of the East-West Metro corridor between Howrah Maidan and the IT hub Salt Lake Sector V.
The Metro is expected to cover a 520-metre stretch under the river Hooghly in 45 seconds.
PM Modi to inaugurate first under-river tunnel of Kolkata Metro on 6 March
The Esplanade-Sealdah stretch of the East-West alignment is awaiting completion. The Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah stretch of the East-West Metro corridor is commercially operational at present. The metro works on Automatic Train Operation (ATO) system. In the ATO mode, a Metro train moves from one station to the next station automatically after a long press of ‘ATO departure’ push button by the motorman.
Out of the total 16.6 km length of the East-West Metro, the underground corridor constitutes 10.8 km between Howrah Maidan and Phoolbagan, with the tunnel under the Hooghly River. The rest of the stretch is an elevated corridor.
Kolkata Metro is targeting June-July to start commercial operation in the entire route of East-West alignment between Salt Lake Sector V and Howrah Maidan.
