An underground parking plaza with the capacity to accommodate 900 cars is being planned at Esplanade, Calcutta’s mayor said on Wednesday.

Esplanade, which will be an interchange point for commuters of three Metro railway routes, is likely to see a sharp rise in people arriving there when all three lines become fully operational.

Many commuters might want to park their cars at Esplanade and then take the Metro, mayor Firhad Hakim said.

The state government will spend ₹450 crore to set up the parking plaza.

Calcutta’s police commissioner Manoj Verma and Hakim were presented a plan for the parking plaza by Rites, the railways subsidiary, on Wednesday during a meeting at the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) headquarters.

“Rites presented a plan for the parking plaza under the existing Esplanade bus terminus...They will prepare a detailed project report. The state will finance and build the ₹450 crore project,” Hakim said.

“Calcutta High Court has said that the bus terminus at Esplanade must be shifted elsewhere. No buses will be allowed to terminate there. Buses will drop passengers at Esplanade and leave. New bus terminuses will be set up in Howrah and New Town.”

The mayor added that Rites’ plan mentioned three entry points/exits into the underground parking facility — one each near Press Club Kolkata, Curzon Park and Esplanade bus terminus.

The Esplanade Metro station will become the meeting point of three Metro lines — the East-West Metro, between Sector V and Howrah Maidan (Green Line); the north-south corridor between New Garia and Dakshineswar (Blue Line) and the Joka-BBD Bag Metro (Purple Line).

Passengers will be able to change over from one line to another at Esplanade.

The Esplanade-Sealdah section of East-West Metro, the only unfinished stretch of the 16.6km corridor, received a nod from the commissioner of railway safety (CRS) recently, which means trains on the stretch can start running soon.

The Joka-BBD Bag line will also have a station at Esplanade.

When the three lines become operational, Esplanade is likely to witness a sharp rise in the number of commuters.

“The parking facility is being planned keeping in mind the rise in passenger count,” Hakim added.

Calcutta High Court had ordered the shifting of the Esplanade bus terminus in 2007.

After the Supreme Court upheld two orders of the high court on shifting the bus terminus in 2011, the transport department spent close to ₹10.5 crore on building a bus terminus at Santragachhi in 2015.

The majority of the private bus operators stayed away from the terminus saying Kona Expressway was not ready for the stupendous volume of buses.

In 2020, the transport department identified a three-acre plot in the port area in Kidderpore to set up a terminus. The government even paid ₹10 crore to the Calcutta Port Trust for “permissive possession” of the land. But private bus operators refused to move.