Construction of awaited underwater rail project on the Hooghly river has completed before the end of completion time.
The underwater rail tunnel construction project, commencing in Kolkata, West Bengal, has finished few days before the article News goes on air and therefore the July scheduled deadline.
Underwater tunnel project, of 14.67 km long, 30 m beneath the watercourse bed of Hooghly runs underground for 10.8 km. The project has 6 underground stations to attach Howrah and Salt Lake from the whole of 12 stations. The estimated cost for the project come up around Rs 50 billion. The project had slated for initial begin in 2012 and so delayed to 2015.
Metro will run at a frequency of 2.5-5 minutes at maximum speed of 90 km/hr. First lot of 14 trains manufactured in Spain and the next lot of 14 trains construction is given to BEML. The metro project will connect Slat Lake and Howrah Station with 10 stops between them. These are Karunamoyee, Central Park, City Center, Bengal Chemical, Salt Lake Stadium, Phoolbagan, Sealdah, Esplanade, Mahakaran, Howrah Station and last Howrah Maidan.
In 2004, Pacific Consultant International Group structured the route underneath the Hooghly river. The master plan was first known in 1971 and currently finally, shifted to urge completed up to the end of 2019 year. Mott MacDonald, design consultant, is functioning on the designs of all the elevated stations. Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects are working on designs of all the underground stations. Elevated stations construction work is given within the hands of the Kolkata based Simplex Infrastructure Ltd.
Afcons Transtonnelstroy and Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Limited (KMRC) together are working on Kolkata Metro Line 2 or East-West Corridor of Kolkata Metro. Up to date, 6 elevated stations had structured and roofed. Underground stations are yet to get constructed using cut and cover method. Three underground stations had been built by Italian-Thai Development cementation public company. The construction and development work of the remainder three is given to Afcons. Two tunnel boring machines are deployed in phase-1 of the project for 5490 meters tunnel construction and schedule to open in July 2018.
Under the Phase-2 of the project, started in March 2016, a section between Howrah Maidan and Mahakaran station built by using two tunnel boring machines from Herrenknecht. Afcons-Transtonnelstroy, an Indo-Russian JV team is functioning on that section of 520 meters stretch at Howrah Maidan.
Credit goes to 250 engineers, technicians and workers, worked day and night to finish the task before the expected completion time. Hopefully expected that final commission could meet the deadlines by the tip of 2019 for making underwater tunnel.