Commercial services of East-West Metro (Green Line) will be suspended in two four-day phases later this month to expedite the trial of the signalling system, the carrier said on Tuesday.
The 16.6km corridor is now functional between Salt Lake Sector V and Sealdah (Green Line 1) and between Howrah Maidan and Esplanade (Green Line 2). Both stretches will remain shut from February 13 to 16 and again from February 20 to 23.
“Metro Railway is now planning to grant complete traffic block in two spells, from February 13 to 16 and again from February 20 to 23 for testing of the CBTC system for the entire Green Line from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector V,” the Metro spokesperson said on Tuesday.
A 2.6km stretch between Esplanade and Sealdah, which has seen four incidents of water leakage and soil subsidence since 2019, delaying the project for years, is the only under-construction part of the corridor. The civil construction of the stretch was completed in December, said an official of the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation, the implementing agency of East-West Metro.
Till now, the communication-based train control (CBTC) system — an advanced anti-collision system — was functional separately, as two units, in the two operational phases of the corridor.
Now, trials are underway to bring the entire Howrah Maidan-Sector V corridor under one unified CBTC system, said engineers.
The KMRC had earlier sought a 45-day suspension of commercial services — from February 8 to March 24 — on the route to expedite the trial. The Metro authorities were against a prolonged suspension.
Commercial services were suspended on January 12 and 19, both Sundays, for the trial. Commercial services are not run on Green Line 1 on Sundays.
The first trial run on the Sealdah-Esplanade stretch through the west-bound (Howrah-bound) tunnel of Green Line was conducted on January 21. Trains had already run on the east-bound (Sector V-bound) tunnel.
A Metro engineer said the first step of the exhaustive tests involved “off-loading the old software and uploading the new software for a unified corridor”.
“This meant upgrading the new system at all 12 stations in the corridor and at the control centres in Sector V and Howrah Maidan,” the engineer said.
