KOLKATA (Metro Rail News): The CMRS team in Kolkata to inspect the underwater metro stretch for safety and specifications of the Structure on the Howrah-Esplanade stretch of the Kolkata Metro has suspended the inspection midway.
Aberrations
The team has been disappointed with the dire state of the eastbound tunnel of the Esplanade-Sealdah Section. The tunnel will be used to transport rakes from the Central Park Depot. In Addition, the team is also unhappy with the incomplete shaft at Esplanade station made for lifting out construction material.
Some stretches even needed more tracks and the concrete casting used for laying tracks.
The Inspection
According to earlier reports, the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) was set to undertake an extensive week-long examination. The survey would have been split into two separate teams, with the first working from Friday to Monday and the second from Tuesday to Thursday. Notably, under the CRS, the Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety (CMRS) would have attended the final inspection phase on Wednesday.
It was the first time that a CMRS team was there to conduct the inspections.
The Bowbazar Complication
The 800 m Bowbazar stretch of the East-West Metro Corridor has witnessed three incidences of water seepage and subsidence since 2019. This happened for One of the eight cross packages, each 250 meters apart, between Esplanade & Sealdah, which led to the subsidence in October 2022.
A cross-package aims to connect two tunnels. Thus, emergency or contingency situations can be tackled well. Later, the number of cross-packages was reduced to 5, separating 360 meters between each.
The State of East-West Metro
The East-West Metro currently covers a distance of 9.2km, extending from Sector V to Sealdah. The Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), responsible for the 16km corridor between Sector V and Howrah Maidan, has encountered challenges leading to the decision to limit operations to a truncated route from Esplanade to Howrah Maidan starting at the end of this year, bypassing further extension beyond Sealdah.
Given the absence of a depot on the Howrah side, empty train sets would have travelled from the Salt Lake depot to the operational Sealdah Station. From there, these sets would be conveyed through the eastbound tunnel of the Sealdah-Esplanade Stretch, currently under construction, to reach the Esplanade Station
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