RailEnquiry

The airport is set to have an underground Metro Railway station where the proposed tracks on the Dum Dum-Barasat and New Garia-airport routes will converge and which will be linked to the upcoming integrated terminal with walkalators. The plan to set up the station, held up following differences over whether the tracks would be underground or overground, was finalised at a recent meeting between the railway and civil aviation ministries. Metro had earlier planned elevated tracks for the Dum Dum-Barasat project and underground ones for part of the New Garia-airport one. The airport authorities had objected to the elevated tracks on the ground that they would pose a threat to flights. "There will be an underground station for both routes at the airport. The railway will incur extra cost for this but the plan has been finalised because the airport authorities told us that elevated tracks could jeopardise flight safety," said Pratyush Ghosh, deputy general manager of Metro Railway. Metro sources said the cost of the two projects, estimated at approximately Rs 7,000 crore, could jump by at least Rs 500 crore because of the tweak in the plan. "The location of the station hasn't been finalised yet but it's likely to be built around 300 metres from the upcoming integrated terminal, which is likely to be opened by the pujas. The station will be linked to the terminal with walkalators and elevators," said an official of the Airports Authority of India. According to the final plan, the elevated tracks for the Rs 3,951crore New Garia-airport project will go underground near Haldiram's on VIP Road to cover around 3.2km till the airport. In the other project, the cost of which had been estimated at Rs 2,918 crore, the train will run on elevated tracks from Dum Dum to the Jessore Road-VIP Road crossing, where it will enter underground to run around 900 metres till the station and another 700 metres after that before emerging overground at the Jessore Road-Belghoria Expressway intersection. Metro officials said the tendering process for large chunks on both routes were yet to start because of confusion over whether the tracks would be elevated or underground. Of the 32km in the New Garia-airport project, tendering has been done for 25km, till City Centre New Town from the southern end. On the other route spanning 18km, tendering is over for 7km from Dum Dum and 5km from Barasat. "We will start the tendering process for the remaining 7km of the New Garia-airport route and 6km for the Dum Dum-Barasat route shortly," said Metro deputy general manager Ghosh. He said it would take "three-four" years for both projects to be completed. The original deadline for both was 2014-15.