CMRS Approves Nagpur Metro’s Sitabuldi-Kasturchand Park Section
Per MahaMetro’s press release, Janak Kumar Garg – the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS) has approved commercial operations on the 1.49 km Sitabuldi – Kasturchand Park section of Nagpur Metro’s Orange Line.
This is the first leg of Nagpur Metro Phase 1’s 7.144 km elevated Reach-2 (Sitabuldi to Automotive Square) which will become operational in the coming weeks. Testing (trial runs) on the 630m Sitabuldi-Zero Mile section started in June 2019 and were extended by another 860m to Kasturchand Park in June 2021.
Between August 3-5, the CMRS’ team visually inspected both Zero Mile and Kasturchand Park stations – their passenger amenities & station control room’s facilities – and then performed a trolley-inspection followed by speed trials by one of Nagpur’s CRRC trains.
MahaMetro hasn’t disclosed the conditions set by the CMRS to start operations.
Zero Mile Station will eventually become a part of a 20-storey tower and was this summer renamed to Zero Mile Freedom Park Station. Back in May 2016, MahaMetro revealed its concept design by a consortium of Ratan J Batliboi Consultants, GMP international & Shirish Patel and Associates Consultants.
Some details and snaps of both stations released by MahaMetro:
Zero Mile Station – it will be housed in a 20 floor building having four levels of parking. The concourse level will have ticketing counter and retail shops. There will be 13 commercial floors above the station. The new station will enable passengers to reach Civil Lines area
Kasturchand Park Station: This station will enable Nagpurians to travel to Sadar Bazar using the Metro. It has all modern amenities while its façade has a heritage look as the lattices in Kasturchand Park pavilion have been replicated on a larger scale in it.
When this section goes live, the city’s Orange Line will become roughly 14.5 km long connecting Khapri – Kasturchand Park via 13 stations, and the network will become 24.4 km large with 22 stations – view Phase 1 route map and info.
For more updates, check out the Nagpur section or my Home Page!
– TMRG
What are your thoughts on the low ridership of Nagpur Metro? Is it a while elephant in the making or is there potential for increase in ridership once additional sections become operational?
White elephant and overkill in my opinion. Locals rely on 2 wheelers for point to point connections and I remember reading only about 10% currently use public transport (city/state buses).
Converting them into loyal metro commuters will be a tall order. MahaMetro knows this and they’ve partnered up with various last-mile solution providers (e-rickshaws, e-scooters etc.), but I feel we’ll see very little ridership improvement at least for the next 10 years.
..too bad to hear that!
A project of this type is sanctioned after thorough scrutiny and vetting by various agencies at State and Central level. Even after that, we end up spending resources to create a ‘white elephant’. The money could have been better utilized in building a metro line in some other densely populated part of the state/country.
..no wonder, the decision to scrap the metro project in Chandigarh is correct. Thereby, prevented creation of another white elephant!!
Thanks for your response. It’s quite unfortunate that whilst we are creating such ‘White elephants’ the major metro cities barring Delhi which are in dire need of massive public transport systems are still struggling to expand their metro systems.
On the note of ‘White elephants’ any updates on network expansion for lucknow and Jaipur metro? I keep searching news articles on their expansion plans but can’t find any. Presumably they fall under the same category.
First of all, Let me tell you, Nagpur is currently having the best Inter Roads connectivity (You may have seen). And the vehiclular traffic is not that much as in Tier I cites. This makes Nagpur highly connected with Roads itself and that’s why people keep saying that there is no need of metro in the city. See that’s what happened in Pune, this city was also having a good connectivity by roads, but over the time a slight increase in population, it created a need of a better and convenient way of transportation in Pune.
If we see this thing with a clean mind and future scope there is no doubt that the pace of development in Maharashtra is way more than any other state in our country. The state is having 2 capital cities, so there should be no compromise in between selecting the choices of future projects, where to show up and invest, its again first Mumbai then Nagpur and then we move towards other cities.
Due to the State’s financial growth and Centralized powers, Its completely utilized in developing the remaining cities in the State of Maharashtra.