New 8.8km Chitpur-Karunamoyee Metro line proposed

Kolkata: A new project to link Eastern Railway’s Kolkata station (Chitpur) with Salt Lake’s Karunamoyee has been conceived by the Metro Railway. The development comes days before railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav’s visit to the city on Saturday to discuss a slew of railway projects with CM Suvendu Adhikari at the state secretariat.

This is the first time in a decade and a half that a new metro project has been mooted by Metro. While the Blue Line had rolled off 42 years ago and has undergone north and southward extensions, most metro lines were conceived around 17 years ago and are either still under construction or yet to take off. Last week, following a meeting at the KMC, the Pink Line (Baranagar-Barrackpore corridor) was revived after 16 years. The city’s Line 2 or the Green Line, started in 2008, completed its full 16.6km, after 17 years, when PM Narendra Modi flagged off the last 2.4-km stretch in Aug, last year.

Feasibility study and on-ground survey have been initiated for the 8.8-km corridor stretching from Eastern Railway’s Kolkata station at Chitpur to Karunamoyee in Salt Lake via Khudiram Bose Road (near the Blue Line’s Sutanuti or Sovabazar station), Bagjola Canal and 6 Island Circle or No. 6 Island along the Bagjola Canal route near Khudiram Bose Road. It has not yet been decided whether the line would be partly underground and entirely elevated.

“The idea is to directly connect Kolkata station with Karunamoyee which already has an East-West Metro station, formally called the Green Line. The project is at a very preliminary stage as only the feasibility study has started. It will be followed by detailed project report (DPR), permission from the Railway Board and the final go-ahead by the railway ministry. When the project is implemented, commuters can travel at ease between an otherwise remote railway station in north Kolkata to Salt Lake’s office hub, residential areas and Sector V as well,” a Metro official said. As of now, funds amounting to around Rs 80 lakh have been released for the survey, sources said.

“Although the new corridor will terminate at East-West Metro’s Karunamoyee station, officials said it will be distinct from the existing Green Line (Howrah Maidan-Sector V) that runs via Karunamoyee,” an official said.

The new project, which has not been given a code like the other metro corridors crisscrossing Kolkata, is part of a broader push by the railway ministry to expand connectivity to underserved areas of the city, he said.

Metro officials are nevertheless enthusiastic about the prospect of the city getting a new metro line. While newer networks like the Delhi Metro, Namma Metro (Bengaluru), Hyderabad and Mumbai Metro are scaling up rapidly, Kolkata’s expansion has relied heavily on overcoming land hurdles for decades-old “legacy” blueprints sanctioned back in 2007 or 2009. The recently conceived Kolkata station-Karunamoyee Line marks a major shift from the earlier tradition.