Railway Min Inaugurates Work on Kolkata Metro’s Esplanade Station
India’s Railway Minister, Suresh Prabhu, on Saturday afternoon inaugurated construction work on Kolkata Metro’s 16.34 km Line-2’s Esplanade Station at an event held remotely at the Howrah Railway Station.
Designed by RITES, this station will be built underneath the Esplanade Tram Depot’s land, and in its first stage connect up with the existing Line-1’s Esplanade Station to allow easy transfers. In the future, an additional underground station box will be constructed here to serve as the northern terminal of the 15.75 km Joka – Esplanade line (Line-3), making it the city’s first 3-line interchange, and depending on its completion timeframe, perhaps India’s second after Delhi’s Kashmere Gate Station which just got connected with a 3rd line in May.
Here’s a crude alignment of how all 3 lines will meet at Esplanade.
Red: Existing Line-1 – tracks are a depth of 11.73m | Blue: Under Construction Line-2 (“EW Line”) – tracks will be at a depth of 26.23m | Green: Under Construction Line-3 (civil construction bids yet to be invited for underground section) – tracks will be at a depth of 11.73m
Alignments of Kolkata’s 3 lines at Esplanade – view Kolkata Metro map & information
Line-2 was originally supposed to meet Line-1 at Central Station, but a lack of interest by the state government to carry out land acquisition forced the operator in 2015 to realign the line and have them meet further south at Esplanade.
Some images:
Photo Copyright: GM Kolkata Metro
Photo Copyright: GM Kolkata Metro
Photo Copyright: GM Kolkata Metro
Note that he also inaugurated a new escalator at Rabindra Sarobar Metro Station. Yes, an all new escalator. Bravo.
Construction work for the station (estimated at Rs 274.05 crore) and its associated twin tunnels to Sealdah Station will be carried out by the ITD-ITD Cem JV as part of package UG-2 which they were awarded in February 2010. Here’s an image of its guide wall under construction:
Photo Copyright: TOI
For more updates, check out the Kolkata section of The Metro Rail Guy!
– TMRG
Your last 3 posts have been about work starting in Kolkata, Bengaluru & Nagpur. Civil engineers must be quite happy with all these new projects starting.
Yea, and there’s lot more in the pipeline!
KOLKATA METRO ESPLANADE STATION IS AT A DEPTH OF 11.73METR,WHERE AS THE MINIMUM DEPTH OF AN EAST WEST METRO STATION IS 12.86/(PHOOLBAGAN).
What will be the depth of Sealdah, Mahakaran, Howrah Railway Station and Howrah Maidan stations?
From what I’ve heard, the base slab of all EW line stations, barring Esplanade, is 24m deep.
Thank you TMRG
What is the work status of joka-esplanade stretch??
Joka – Mominpura is under construction as you probably already know. There are a couple of gaps which are being filled. Eg. at the Mint
Mominpura – Esplanade section’s civil bidding is yet to commence.
Thanks TMRG for all the updates… You are sharing such valuable informations. But what is the role of other residents of Kolkata, where the metro work has been the slowest and still full of hurdles.. Shouldn’t we make ourselves more involved in the progress of metro work in Kolkata after such political games are being played… Please advise on how a common peraon can involve in making this dream come true..
Thanks for your message, Rohit.
You know, I’m really not sure what the common man can do. Perhaps form a citizen action group that can help ease out issues? Metro operators often hide information, so requesting information to facilitate land acquisition and assuaging everyone’s fears would be a good start. You can also team up with local journalists to highlight hurdles and how some org/authority/govt body has been slow in getting things done?