India's first underwater metro ride crosses 520m Hooghly river in 45 sec

A piece of history was made on Wednesday around 11.45 am when a metro train emerged from the 520-metre tunnel under the Hooghly, marking India's first train journey under a river. The feat comes nearly 40 years after the metro began its Indian journey in Kolkata - a good 18 years before Delhi got its first metro line - and 170 years after Indian Railways ran its first train between Bori Bunder and Thane.

"It is a historic day not only for Indian Railways but also for Kolkata. Trial runs along this stretch have started today," said P Uday Kumar Reddy, Managing Director, Metro Railway. When the train crossed the Hooghly and reached Howrah East-West Metro Station, the deepest metro station in the country at 33 meters below the surface, Reddy and KMRC MD H N Jaiswal were present along with the Afcons team for the customary 'puja' and coconuts. breaking ceremony.

From there, the officials boarded the train to complete the journey to Howrah Maidan, the terminus of the 16.6 km east-west corridor.

Later, another train made the same journey. The two trains will be used in extended trial runs on the Esplanade-Howrah Maidan section over the next few months. KMRC hopes to complete trials in five to seven months and obtain a safety clearance to begin commercial operations on the shortened section by the end of the year.

The five-minute journey of the East-West Metro under Hooghly on Wednesday morning was uneventful, but the occasion was momentous.

Construction of the two tunnels, which began at the Howrah Maidan end, was completed without a hitch nearly six years ago. But barely 6.2 km away, when the pair of TBMs crossed the congested Bowbazar district, disaster struck. One of the TBMs hit an aquifer, causing the ground to collapse, toppling at least 23 houses and damaging several others. In 2022, two more subsidences occurred in the area, further delaying the project.

With issues to be resolved in the cave-in zone between Sealdah and Esplanade, the KMRC and Metro authorities are looking to run a shortened 4.8 km line between Esplanade and Howrah Maidan from year-end. The 9.4 km stretch between Sector V and Sealdah is operational. Once the 2.5-km Esplanade-Sealdah gap is plugged, the commute between Howrah Maidan and Sector V, the Green Line of the Kolkata Metro, will take just 27 minutes.