LINE CLEAR: With a court case over land acquisition set to be resolved within a month, Metro Railway plans to make the Tollygunge-Garia link operational by July 2009. A Telegraph picture

Metro Railway will start running up to Naktala from September.

Metro Railway general manager U.C.D. Shreni announced this on Thursday, while addressing the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce.

“We plan to have the link between Tollygunge and Garia operational partly, at least till Naktala, by September 2008,” Shreni said.

The full link, till New Garia, will not be functional till June 2009, he added.

Trains will run up to Naktala at an interval of 20 minutes, with every third or fourth rake from Dum Dum making the full trip. Between Tollygunge and Naktala, the train will stop at Kudghat and Bansdroni.

The Tollygunge-Garia extension project, sanctioned in 1999-2000, has been delayed by two years following land acquisition problems near New Garia station. The delay has resulted in an escalation of the project cost from Rs 907 crore to Rs 1,032.8 crore.

“The court case related to land acquisition is likely to be resolved within a month. So, we have set July 2009 as the tentative deadline for making the full stretch operational,” said Shreni.

The authorities have decided to bring in seven more rakes to cope up with the rise in the passenger count — from four lakh a day to five lakh.

The new rakes will have “forced ventilation” and the carbon dioxide level inside the coach will comply with the international standards.

The rakes will have wider vestibules, photo-chromatic and UV-protected glasses in doors and windows, and a touch-screen computer monitor for the driver.

But those hoping for a comfortable trip in an air-conditioned coach, as in Delhi, will be disappointed. “We don’t have the provision to release the extra heat generated by the air-conditioners,” said Shreni.

Within a year, Metro Railway will replace its paper tickets with smart cards for regular passengers and tokens for “one-off” commuters.

“According to our estimates, around 75 per cent of our commuters will use smart cards. The rest will be issued tokens,” said a senior official of Metro Railway.