KOLKATA: The entire 14km Purple Line will be completed by the end of 2028 or the beginning of 2029, a metro official said.
Officials said the tunnel-boring machines (TBMs), manufactured by Germany’s Herrenknecht and being assembled in Chennai, will start arriving in Dec. “The TBMs are likely to be injected in March 2025,” Metro Railway’s CPRO Kausik Mitra said on Friday.
The agencies received a major boost recently when the defence ministry gave its approval to the shifting of the BC Roy Market. Most of the Esplanade 300 m x 40 m station box will come up on the location where the market now stands. Armed with the defence ministry’s nod, RVNL has invited a Rs 19 crore bid to construct a single-storey temporary structure at the Mounted Police grounds to shift 528 traders.
It has also started work for one corner of the Purple Line’s Esplanade station on the available strip of land at the erstwhile Mounted Police paddock. “Talks are on to shift the L20 bus stand to Curzon Park,” Mitra said, adding that “construction of the underground Mominpur-Esplanade stretch is going on in full swing”.
TOI on Thursday reported that the L20 bus stand at Esplanade is likely to be shifted to Curzon Park, next to the East-West Metro station, to make room for the Purple Line’s Esplanade station. The relocation may happen in the next one or two months, officials said after an inspection between state agencies and RVNL. A part of the new Esplanade will be built on the 2,900 sqm area where the century-old Esplanade-Barrackpore route buses are now parked.
100% transplantation
The Purple Line is the only project where 100% of the trees cut off for construction will be transplanted. In a survey, 946 trees were found to be infringing the Maidan area. Till now, 112 trees have been transplanted and five times more were planted by RVNL. The agency has sought the Central Empowered Committee’s (CEC) permission to transplant the rest, as per an apex court’s directive, relating to a PIL.
Noapara trials
A two-day trial of taking services to Noapara instead of Dum Dum on the North-South Metro (Blue line) will start this week. The New Garia-Dakshineswar section will run 238 services instead of 234 on those days. “Trains starting from Dum Dum for New Garia will start from Noapara on a trial basis on those days,” a Metro spokesperson said. The first and last trains from Noapara will be at 6.50am and 9.40pm, respectively.
