Metro Rail may run below Hooghly in Kolkata

The Metro rail in Kolkata was the first underground railway service in the country. 12 years after it was commissioned, the West Bengal government has proposed to build an East-West link. And this one will need an underwater tunnel, reports CNBC-TV18.

Twelve years after it was commissioned, Kolkata''s sixteen and a half kilometer long metro rail still runs at whopping operating loss of over Rs70 crore a year. But that didn''t deter the union government from extending the service by another nine kilometers.

The extension, now under construction on the southern fringes of Kolkata, is expected to cost around a thousand crore rupees. And though funds were sanctioned some seven years ago, litigation over land acquisition delayed construction and the track is unlikely to be ready until the end of next year. While the north-south track is being extended, the Bengal government has mooted a proposal to build an east-west link. This one will need a tunnel passing below the Hooghly, the river that separates Kolkata from the fast expanding town of Howrah.

Commuting between Howrah and Kolkata takes an incredible amount of time, whether you take the riverine route or cross one of the three bridges. But if there''s a train running through an underwater tunnel, like in London and New York, you should be able to reach Kolkata''s IT hub in Salt Lake from the interiors of Howrah in a few minutes.

The proposed nine-kilometer East-West link is estimated to cost around Rs6,000 crore, and the Bengal government has roped in Japan Bank for International Cooperation to lend up to Rs4,500 crore for it. Call it ambitious if you like, but the government proposes to construct it in less than five years, and because any big project in Bengal now calls for consensus amongst political parties, the Japanese bank has been asked to make a presentation to policymakers and elected representatives from all political parties on the first of June. And while the brainstorming goes on, people who commute from Howrah and Kolkata everyday keep fingers firmly crossed.