8am on Valentine’s Day: Your date with East-West Metro

KOLKATA: Railway minister Piyush Goyal will unveil the East-West Metro on February 13 but you will get to ride the swanky coaches the day after, on Valentine’s Day.
On February 14, the trains will chug out of Sector V and Salt Lake Stadium stations at 8am. The ticket counters will open at 7.45am. The last trains from both the stations will leave at 8pm and ticket counters will close at 7.55pm.This will also be the general schedule that will be followed for the curtailed 5km services. Sunday services will start late, though. The first trains will start at noon but the closing time will remain the same — 8pm.

Initially, it was decided that commuters will be able to avail themselves of East-West services on February 13 itself, immediately after the inauguration. But officials said the inauguration ceremony on February 13 may commence in the afternoon and not in the morning as was planned earlier, when the authorities had prepared the schedule for a December launch.
Initially, Metro will run 37 pairs of services between Salt Lake Sector V and Salt Lake Stadium. Trains will run at an interval of 20 minute initially but the frequency may be tweaked depending on footfall and demand. Of the 11 BEML rakes that are in Metro’s possession now, two would be used for daily services while a third will be kept on standby. The rakes used will not be the same every day. Of the 11 rakes, about six have been fitted with necessary equipment till now. All of them will be tried out on a rotational basis.
“We will have 18 motormen who have been trained in Bengaluru. They have also received training in Hyderabad about the Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) system. They are now fully adept at aligning trains with the platform screen doors at stations. On Sundays, we shall start services from noon. There will be 25 pairs of services on Sundays but this can change depending on demand. It takes 13 minutes to complete the journey from Salt Lake Sector V to Salt Lake Stadium. So two rakes will be sufficient to operate along the stretch. One rake will be kept on standby,” said a senior official of Metro Railway.
The first phase will cover six swank elevated stations. Central Park is the only single-floor station where the platform and the concourse are on the same level. It has three platforms, the third one will be used for trains to enter from the depot, which is right next to this station. From Central Park station, the train will travel to the terminal Sector V station and start its journey.
More than 100 Metro staff members have now taken over the section from Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC), which is implementing the East-West Metro project. Even as KMRC is implementing the project, Metro Railway, which runs the north-south section, will be in charge of operations.
“We have trained all drivers and other staff from Metro Railway to operate the CBTC and signalling systems and run trains from the operation control centre, maintain signals and halt the trains in coordination with the platform screen gates,” a KMRC official said.