India's first underwater metro train, passing through Kolkata’s iconic Hooghly river, will begin service in 2022 March.
The East-West Metro project, connecting the twin cities Kolkata and Howrah is being constructed by Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), which launched India's fist metro project in 1984 with a North-South service.
The 16.6 km route with six stations on the way is having its terminal stations at Salt Lake Sector V and the Howrah Maidan. It is expected that 9,00,000 people will be travelling by this new line daily.
The metro train service will pass through India's first underwater transportation tunnel, which is is likely to be completed in 2021. The train will take less than a minute to cross a 520-meter river tunnel constructed underneath Hooghly river. On normal day, it takes about 20 minutes to use the ferry and more an hour to cross the Howrah bridge. Howrah bridge is a cantilever bridge on the river Hooghly and one of the busiest bridge in the world.
The tunnel is having a length of 10.8 kilometres and the length of river crossing is 520 metres. The internal diameter of each tunnel is 5.55 metres and it would be about 30 metres from the ground level.
KMRC, a joint venture company owned by Govt. of West Bengal and Govt. of India on a 50-50 partnership basis is launching this project as Kolkata Metro Line 2. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs holds the shares on behalf of Govt. of India
Nearly half of the project cost is funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which provided a soft loan of Rs 41.6 billion. KMRC will repay the JICA loan over a period of 30 years after an initial six-year moratorium.
KMRC is hoping to get the final installment of Rs 20 crore relased over the next two years from the Indian Railway Board.
