The metro railway station at Central Secretariat here will soon become an interchange station for two upcoming lines – the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line and the Jehangirpuri-HUDA City Centre line – of the network.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is expanding the existing underground metro station at Central Secretariat to convert it into an interchange station. “This is for the first time that construction activities are being carried out to expand an operational underground station. It is a challenging task as it has to be done without causing inconvenience to commuters. It was also very complex for the engineers to excavate a tunnel at a depth of about 16 metres running through the high-security Lutyens’ zone,” said a DMRC spokesperson.
Once complete, the integrated Central Secretariat metro station will serve as the interchange for Jehangirpuri-HUDA City Centre (Line 2) and Central Secretariat-Badarpur (Line 6), which are on broad gauge and standard gauge respectively.
Passengers entering this underground metro station will find a common concourse where they can purchase tokens and smart cards and can move towards their direction of travel at the platform level through lifts, escalators or stairs.
“Direct access will be provided between the platforms for Line 2 and Line 6 so that passengers from Jehangirpuri side wanting to travel towards Badarpur will only have to walk a short distance on the same level to change trains. Other passengers will have to come up to the concourse level before changing platforms,” the spokesperson said.
Line 2 of Delhi Metro, which terminates at Central Secretariat at present, will be further extended to HUDA City Centre in Gurgaon in June 2010 while the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line is scheduled to be opened in September 2010.
According to DMRC officials, this will be the first time in the city that an interchange facility will be provided for commuters both at the concourse and platform level in an underground station without requiring the commuters to pass through automatic fare collection gates.
“The tunnel that has been constructed at Central Secretariat for the Badarpur line is a cut-and-cover box type (rectangular type) tunnel with a height of 5.75 metres and width of 5.2 metres, stretching up to the Udyog Bhawan underground metro station. The underground soil surface consisted of mixed hard rock which, though hard to cut, was successfully broken through by the metro engineers.”
“The length of each of the platforms is 140 metres with a width of 6.5 metres. All the five entry and exit points for the passengers at the Central Secretariat metro station will be fully operational once the integrated station gets operational. At present, three entry and exit point operational at the Central Secretariat metro station (Gate 3, 4 and 5),” the spokesperson said.
The passenger subway at Gate 4 and the parking facility at the Central Secretariat metro station, which are at present not functional because of the ongoing construction work there, will be restored and will become operational for use by metro commuters by September 2010.
The contract for the construction work at the Central Secretariat metro station for Line 6 was awarded in September 2007 and over 75 per cent of the civil work has been completed so far. The Central Secretariat-Badarpur corridor will have 15 stations covering a distance of 20.16 km.
