‘Utility of Metro to be maximised now’: Kolkata set to pick up speed with 14km of new tracks this Friday; highest single-day addition till now
Times of India | 20 August 2025
KOLKATA: In the largest such addition, the city is all set to get 14 km of new metro lines, changing the way how Kolkatans commute. This Friday, PM Narendra Modi is scheduled to flag off three metro sections — Green Line or East-West Metro's last 2.6-km leg, the 7-km Noapara-Airport stretch or Yellow Line's phase I, and the 4.4-km Ruby-Metropolitan leg or Orange Line's phase II.
Among the three segments, the shortest is the most significant. Inauguration of the 2.6-km Esplanade-Sealdah section, which had hit major roadblocks as it passed through the subsidence-prone Bowbazar stretch, will mean completion of the 16.6-km East-West Metro; it is expected to catapult daily ridership on the line from 1 lakh to 7 lakhs. East-West Metro now runs in two disjointed sections: the 9.2-km Sector V-Sealdah stretch and the 4.8-km Esplanade-Howrah Maidan stretch. A complete Green Line would mean direct connectivity between Salt Lake's Sector V and Howrah Maidan with stops at transit hubs Sealdah station, Esplanade and Howrah station.
"When the missing link is joined, we expect around 7 lakh people to ride the East-West Metro every day," said Metro Railway Kolkata GM P Uday Kumar Reddy.
Implemented at Rs 1,000 crore, East-West is the city's most ambitious infrastructure project that also boasts of India's first under-river metro tunnel. Not only will the corridor shorten travel time between Sealdah and Howrah — two of India's businest railway stations — to just 12 minutes, its intersection with the North-South Blue Line at Esplanade will give Kolkatans an interlocked metro grid that will ease travel across the length and breadth of the city.
"The opening of the Esplanade-Howrah Maidan under-water stretch in March last year was historic but the most crucial addition will only happen now. The excitement of riding below the river was there but the real utility of East-West Metro wasn't maximised till now," said an official of Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation.
The second ready-to-open metro stretch, the 7-km Noapara-Airport corridor, will give Kolkata its much-awaited airport-metro connectivity. It will allow commuters to switch lines at Noapara and travel across the length of the city on the 30-km Dakshineswar-Sahid Khudiram corridor (Blue Line) and use the Esplanade interchange to travel along its breadth from Howrah Maidan to Sector V on the East-West metro (Yellow Line).
Commissioning of the 4.4-km extension of the Orange Line from Ruby (Hemanta Mukhopadhyay station) to Metropolitan (Beleghata station) is also significant for Metro Railway, which suffered a severe setback after North-South Line's southern terminal station, Kavi Subhash, was shut down indefinitely on July 28. Orange Line, which now runs 5.4 km from Kavi Subhash (New Garia) to Ruby, lost more than half its riders as passengers on EM Bypass can no longer use the Kavi Subhash interchange to avail of the North-South Line.
"Orange Line is expected to gain some viability now with the 4.4 km extension as people can travel all the way to Science City and Metropolitan," an official said. But, as Patuli resident Anuradha Sarkar said, "Without North-South's southern terminal, seamless travel is now a distant dream.