KOLKATA : Three years from now and you would be climbing down eight storeys to reach the East-West
Metro station at Esplanade. The station will be 28m deep so that the twin tunnels, which will take S N Banerjee Road and travel towards Sealdah, can steer clear of the North-South tracks.
The ‘interchange’ East-West station — to be linked with the existing North-South corridor through a subway — will have four tiers. In July 2017, construction major ITD Cementation, under supervision of implementing agency
Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (
KMRC), started building the structure one of India’s deepest Metro stations. It will be the city’s next deepest station. The East-West station coming up inside Howrah station’s new complex is 30m below the surface. The determining factor for the depth of the station (coming up below platforms 16 and 17 of the new complex of Howrah station) was the alignment of the tunnels below the Hooghly.
Considering the depth, five escalators will be installed at the Esplanade multi-tier station, which aligns with the North-South corridor on the mezzanine level. Ticket counters will come up on this level since it’s the first space commuters will access. Then comes ‘upper concourse’ — the space has been reserved for a commercial complex — followed by the ‘lower concourse’. The entire floor will be used for MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) installations, which include air-conditioners, transformers, generators, power cables. Finally, there’s the fourth, or platform, level. This floor will have the base slab and double discharge platforms that will lead to twin tunnels.
Since each floor of the East-West station covers 7,525sqm area, the total builtup space of the four-tier station is 30,000 sqm. ITD Cementation has adopted the conventional cut-and-cover method of construction (the standard way of building all six underground stations). As the name suggests, cutand-cover involves using excavation equipment to dig a large trench, or rectangular hole, in the ground. The hole is then covered by a concrete deck.
Once the deck is in place, surface activity can resume as construction works continue below. Like other stations, during construction of the
East-West Esplanade station, pre-cast panels will be used to form various levels and internal stuctures, similar to the construction of underground basements of highrise buildings.
Currently, footprint, architecture, MEP designing and drawings for the Esplanade station are in progress. As are construction of diaphragm walls and RCC (reinforced, cement, concrete) piles. “Out of 136 diaphragms wall panels (each 4m wide), 106 are already complete,” said a source. The station will be complete by December 2020.
