http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/E-W_Metro_corridor_may_be_the_next_tou...

Times Of India
15 Jun 2008, 0241 hrs IST

E-W Metro corridor may be the next tourist attraction

KOLKATA: The East-West Metro railway corridor may emerge as a tourism
destination in itself. It will have four landmark stations and two
high-capacity stations of international standards, which will stand
apart for their architectural marvel and thematic design.

"A lot of tourists will come only to see these stations," said a
senior transport department official. Officials from the department
recently met some leading architects of the country for the design of
the landmark stations.

The stations at Salt Lake stadium, City Centre, Karunamoyee and Sector
V will be the new icons of the city. "These four places have some
unique features. For example, the Salt Lake Stadium station will have
a sports complex at one side and the Swabhumi Heritage Park and Apollo
Gleneagles Hospitals on the other. So, the station will reflect these
features," said chief traffic transportation engineer B K Sadhu.

Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) will engage international firms
to design and construct its Howrah and Sealdah stations. These two
points are very important as a huge volume of passenger traffic will
shift from the surface railway to the underground railway network.

The depth of the Metro tunnel would equal the height of a 10-storey
building. So, it will have escalators at different levels, apart from
staircases. A challenging construction for technologists, the corridor
will be the first in the country to run below a river.

The transport department, the nodal agency for the project, wants to
steer clear of certain hurdles before construction work begins. And,
land acquisition is a key hurdle. The department has decided to build
an eight-storey building on a plot of Calcutta State Transport
Corporation, now used as a garbage dump. Traders displaced from land
acquired for the project would be rehabilitated in a part of the
building while the rest of it might house the KMRC office.

The state government will start work on the elevated portion from the
Salt Lake-end by October. RITES are close to completing the detailed
project report, which estimates the cost to be around Rs 3,349 crore.
It wants to engage Delhi Metro Rail Corporation as the probe
consultant of their report. Designing and drawing is the next stage.

Significantly, construction of the Metro corridor will not disrupt
life on the surface though 70%% of it would run underground. This is
because machines will be used to bore the tunnel without obstruction
on the surface. "The part of the tunnel from Howrah Maidan to Eastern
Metropolitan Bypass as well as the part that will run underwater,
through the Ganga, will be an engineering marvel," said a senior
transport department engineer.