Kolkata metro commuters will soon be able to travel through India¡¯s first underwater metro. The work is almost complete and the service is expected to start soon. The 16.6-km Kolkata East West Metro will ferry an estimated one million passengers per day by 2035, a senior Railway official told PTI on July 24.
The project will be completed in 2021. The 520-metre twin tunnel, one east-bound and the other west-bound, is built 30 metres below the riverbed. Commuters between Howrah and Mahakaran metro stations will be under the river for only about a minute when the train passes through the tunnel at a speed of 80 km per hour.?
REACHO
"According to our estimation, by 2035, one million passengers will be using this metro line every day," the official told PTI.
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted about the development on July 25, saying, ¡®Operating under Indian Railways, Kolkata Metro has constructed the first-ever transport tunnel in the country which will pass through underwater.¡¯?
¡®This tunnel has been constructed using world's finest technology, soon rail travel will be introduced for rail passengers on this route,¡¯ he added.
THE BEACON KOLKATA
For the first time in India, a transport tunnel is being built inside the river. Two tunnels are being constructed on the up and down line, which is about 1.4 kilometres long. The width of the Hooghly river here is about 520 meters and this tunnel passes through the bottom of the river bottom.
'It will be connecting two main terminals: Howrah and Sealdah - each of which has a footfall of about 10-12 lakh passengers per day,' Satish Kumar, managing director of?Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Limited?told?DailyMail.