page_title: East West Metro Tunnel
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: East West Metro Tunnel / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: East-West metro tunnel
context_page_description: East West Metro Tunnel is an under construction underwater river tunnel of Kolkata Metro in Kolkata, West Bengal. The river tunnel is constructed underneath Hooghly river. Tunnel length is 10.8 kilometres and width is 5.5 metres. A 520m stretch of the tracks will go through a tunnel under the Hooghly river. The roof of the tunnel would be about 30 metres from the ground level. The tunnel will be completed in 2021. The tunnel will be the first under water river tunnel in India. The tunnel is used by East West Metro Line for metro rail service and constructed by Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation.
context_section_description: The section between Sealdah metro station and Mahakaran metro station was realigned due to the inability of GoWB to provide land on the surface along the original route. Even on the new alignment a station planned at Wellington had to be dropped as GoWB was unable to provide the required land on the surface. Work at Howrah Maidan have started in March 2016. The section between Howrah Maidan metro station and Esplanade metro station has been built by Afcons – Transtonnelstroy JV team, two tunnel boring machines from Herrenknecht are being used to dig the tunnel. This section passes through the Hooghly river for a distance of 520 meters. The section under the river is at a depth of 30 meters (roof to ground distance) whereas the average roof to ground distance is 17 meters. The Howrah metro station on the west side of the river will be at a depth of 30 meters. Tunnelling started from Howrah Maidan side. On 23 May one of the TBM named Rachna completed the tunneling under the Hoogly river in 36 days. The other TBM named Prerna also completed the tunnelling work under the river on 21-June-2017. There were some concerns during tunnelling under Brabourne Road as the tunnel would pass within 100 meters of heritage structures and there were also many old and dilapidated buildings in this section. KMRC received permission from Archaeological Survey of India in June 2017. Residents and shops in the old building were temporarily shifted and the buildings were reinforced before construction of tunnel. Construction of tunnel till Mahakaran station was completed in November 2017. For the Mahakaran-Esplanade section tunnelling of one of the tunnel have been completed on 23 March 2018 the other tunnel have also been completed by April. In this sections also shops and residents of the buildings have been shifted in phased manner before tunnelling. The Esplanade - Sealdah section will be executed by ITD-ITD Cementation JV and was scheduled to start in May 2018.
  Work is being done at Howrah Maidan metro station
  5490 meters of tunnel have been constructed between Subhash Sarovar and Sealdah. This section was constructed by ITD-ITD Cementation JV. All the cross passes between the two tunnels have also been completed. Track laying is being carried out in this section.
  Currently the tunneling work has been stopped due to collapse of building on 3 September 2019 over the Bowbazar area due to TBM hitting an aquifer.
caption: East West Metro Tunnel, under Hooghly River - First underwater metro tunnel in India
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