E-W Metro’s first phase inaugurated

The first phase of East West Metro stretching from Sector V to Salt Lake stadium was inaugurated yesterday on Thursday, February 13^th by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal. 36 years after the first metro line was inaugurated in Kolkata, the second line, East-West metro line starts its journey. Earlier, Kolkata had only one metro line in the North-South corridor from Noapara to Kavi Subhas stations over a length of 27.3 Km which was inaugurated back in 1984. The Phase-I of East - West Metro corridor is a 5.3 kms long stretch and the commercial operations started from today, February 14^th. Piyush Goyal, while unveiling the Phase I of E-W metro ensured that the rest of the 16.5km corridor stretching between Sector V and Howrah Maidan will be operational in two years. Goyal also said that the immediate next station, Phoolbagan station which happens to be the first underground station of the corridor will be operational in the next three to four months. The railway minister said, “In the next three to four months, the stretch till Phoolbagan will become operational. We hope the entire length, till Howrah Maidan, will be opened in another two years if we get local support to clear the bottlenecks”.  Once the whole corridor becomes active, East-West Metro trains will pass under the Hooghly River on its way to Howrah Maidan. The daily operations of the Phase I of E-W Metro will start from 8 am in the morning and the ticket counters will open at 7.45am. The last train will leave both the stations at 8pm with ticket counters closing at 7.55pm. However, on Sundays, the service will start from noon and the closing time will remain the same. Trains will arrive at an interval of 20 minute but the frequency might be increased on demand. Two BEML rakes would be used for daily services and a third one will be kept on standby. The six stations in the first phase are Salt Lake Sector V, Karunamoyee, Central Park, City Centre, Bengal Chemical and Salt Lake Stadium.