PUNE (Metro Rail News): The Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MahaMetro) has finished laying tracks on 7.5km Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation-Dapodi priority stretch. Officials said the installation of the overhead traction cable was in its final stages and would be completed within a month. Once that is complete, the Metro rakes will be operated till Dapodi on a trial basis. MahaMetro officials said two rakes have been mounted on the tracks near the Sant Tukaramnagar station.
“We simultaneously undertook the work of laying the tracks and installing the overhead cables. We expect to finish installing the cables by next month,” an official said. Maha Metro said the work was slated to finish last month, but the pandemic caused delays. “The work gathered pace a couple of months ago. We initially completed the viaduct near the Nashik Phata, which helped us speed up laying of the tracks,” an official said.
Two stations on this route — Sant Tukaramnagar and Phugewadi — are being made operational in the first phase. The Sant Tukaramnagar station is expected to be ready by next month according to sources. Maha Metro said it has deployed maximum manpower to finish the work on a priority basis.
This priority stretch is part of PCMC-Swargate Metro corridor. The stretch from PCMC to Range Hills is elevated with nine stations en route, while the Range Hills-Swargate section will be underground, with five stations including Shivajinagar and Swagate. Work on the underground section is moving at a fast clip. Recently, a tunnel boring machine completed digging a tunnel from the College of Agriculture to the Civil Court in Shivajinagar. The excavations had begun in December last year.
Maha Metro is developing another priority section — the 5km elevated portion between Vanaz in Kothrud and Abasaheb Garware College in Deccan. This section is part of the other corridor coming up in Pune city — the Vanaz-Ramwadi elevated line.
