The officials associated with the project said the electrical works pertaining to the aluminum third rails are also nearing completion. The statutory inspection of the third rails work by the Electrical Inspector to the Government (EIG) has also been sought. 

Also, the signalling work commenced from January 12 and the Kolkata Metro has granted the KMRCL permission for a complete traffic block on two Sundays, January 12 and 19, to facilitate uninterrupted work on the project, said an official. 

The development brings Kolkata closer to linking Howrah, the busiest railway station of Eastern Railway, with Sealdah through the Metro network — via Esplanade. 

With this, commuters will be able to travel between Sealdah and Howrah stations in just eleven minutes in air-conditioned Metro coaches, saving around 90 minutes daily.

The officials associated with design and planning have projected that the Metro service between Howrah and Sealdah will be equivalent to operating 72 air-conditioned buses per hour between the two stations. This translates into a departure of one air-conditioned bus every 50 seconds from both the stations.

Commuting from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector V will also become significantly easier with the completion of this project.  “The East-West link will ensure seamless travel to the Howrah station from other locations, including Ranaghat, Bongaon, New Garia, Dum Dum, and Salt Lake via Sealdah. Passengers arriving at Howrah at night via the Shatabdi or Vande Bharat Express trains will now be able to reach these destinations safely, timely, and economically. But the KMRCL, the project implementation organisation, has sought full closure of the Green Line service from February 8 to March 24 for completing the project,” an official said. 

“The 45-day closure request is yet to be approved by Metro Railway, Kolkata, which considers it to be unreasonable. The Metro officials believe that innovative methods and deployment of workforce at all twelve stations simultaneously can significantly reduce the closure period while testing the platform screen doors bypassing the screen doors during this period to facilitate door testing and running commercial services simultaneously is another option being explored,” the official added. 

The Green Line of Metro Railway, Kolkata will be the first corridor to implement the modern communications-based train control (CBTC) signalling system which will serve as the backbone for safe and automatic train operations. In addition to automatic train protection (ATP) features like collision avoidance, speeding prevention, and red signal passing alerts, the system will also enable automatic train operation (ATO) mode. 

In this mode, the Metro coaches will communicate with each other’s position, speed, acceleration, and deceleration, eliminating the possibility of human error. The system is designed such that the train driver acts primarily as an observer, closing doors and pressing the train start button under normal conditions. In case of emergencies like earthquakes, a single press of a button at the control centre can halt all trains simultaneously, similar to the system employed in Japan. 

This feature is not available in the existing North-South corridor (Blue Line). With a similar CBTC System, London and Moscow Metros are running services with a headway of 90 seconds, which is not possible with other signalling systems.

Presently, the Kolkata Metro operates services in the East-West corridor in two parts — Green Line-1 (from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah) and Green Line-2 (from Esplanade to Howrah Maidan). The missing link between Sealdah and Esplanade, which had been a hurdle due to the Bowbazar issue, was resolved recently. Now, the focus has shifted towards establishing a unified CBTC signalling system for the entire corridor, treating it as a single unit rather than two separate ones. 

The CBTC work necessitates unifying the entire route into a cohesive whole. Currently, the coaches operating in the two sections are not in communication with each other.