Metro Rail may run below Hooghly in Kolkata
31 May 2007
The Metro rail in Kolkata was the first underground railway service in the country. 12 years after it was commissioned, the West Bengal government has proposed to build an East-West link. And this one will need an underwater tunnel, reports CNBC-TV18.
Twelve
years after it was commissioned, Kolkata''s sixteen and
a half kilometer long metro rail still runs at whopping
operating loss of over Rs70 crore a year. But that didn''t
deter the union government from extending the service
by another nine kilometers.
The extension, now under construction on the southern
fringes of Kolkata, is expected to cost around a thousand
crore rupees. And though funds were sanctioned some
seven years ago, litigation over land acquisition delayed
construction and the track is unlikely to be ready until
the end of next year. While the north-south track is
being extended, the Bengal government has mooted a proposal
to build an east-west link. This one will need a tunnel
passing below the Hooghly, the river that separates
Kolkata from the fast expanding town of Howrah.
Commuting between Howrah and Kolkata takes an incredible
amount of time, whether you take the riverine route
or cross one of the three bridges. But if there''s a
train running through an underwater tunnel, like in
London and New York, you should be able to reach Kolkata''s
IT hub in Salt Lake from the interiors of Howrah in
a few minutes.
The proposed nine-kilometer East-West link is estimated
to cost around Rs6,000 crore, and the Bengal government
has roped in Japan Bank for International Cooperation
to lend up to Rs4,500 crore for it. Call it ambitious
if you like, but the government proposes to construct
it in less than five years, and because any big project
in Bengal now calls for consensus amongst political
parties, the Japanese bank has been asked to make a
presentation to policymakers and elected representatives
from all political parties on the first of June. And
while the brainstorming goes on, people who commute
from Howrah and Kolkata everyday keep fingers firmly
crossed.
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