Ending a long wait of 36 years, Kolkata’s second metro line was flagged off with Union minister for Railways Piyush Goel flagging off the first phase of the East-West metro corridor connecting the city’s tech hub Salt Lake Sector V to the soccer venue Yuva Bharati Krirangan.
More than three decades ago, India’s first underground railway service that connects north Kolkata to south Kolkata was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The East-West Metro Railway will be India’s first under river train line. Commercial operations will begin from Friday over a truncated 4.88 kilometre stretch linking six overground stations: Sector V, Karunamoyee, Central Park, City Centre, Bengal Chemical and Salt Lake Stadium stations.
Piyush Goel said that the complete 16.6-km stretch is expected to be operational in two years as the bottlenecks have been addressed.
The East-West metro railway once fully completed can carry seven to eight lakh passengers daily. Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation is supervising the project which is technologically analogous to the Eurostar (connecting Paris and London) and bridges the twin cities of Howrah and Kolkata.
