KOCHI: Officials of Kochi Metro Rail Limited and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation are expected to hold joint brainstorming sessions shortly on commissioning Kochi Metro’s Aluva-Maharaja’s College Ground corridor rather than commission only the 12-km-long Aluva-Palarivattom stretch in April 2017.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had on Sunday directed the metro agencies to commission the entire corridor. He told them to speed up works in the 6-km-long Palarivattom-Maharaja’s corridor to prevent chaos in the vicinity of Palarivattom station when commuters board/disembark the metro en masse. As per revised schedule, the full corridor is slated for commissioning in July 2017.
A senior DMRC official said that the joint meetings would probe how to advance commissioning of the 18-km corridor up to the ground by a few months, in order to operationalise the metro well before the four-year contractual period that would expire in June. “Track laying is over up to Palarivattom station, while a few gaps have to be filled in the stretch beyond, like in Lissie Junction. Signalling and telecommunication work will begin shortly here. Finishing works on stations is getting over. It will be a national record even if the metro is commissioned in July.”
Delay in land acquisition, shifting pipelines and cables and inability to do works in bottlenecked roads during daytime had delayed metro works in the city hub by almost a year. Soma Constructions managed to overcome delays to a great extent, despite these problems, metro sources said.
Reacting to the suggestion by DMRC’s Principal Advisor E. Sreedharan to commission the Palarivattom-Maharaja’s Ground corridor a month or so after the Aluva-Palarivattom stretch is opened, officials in the metro agency said that this would give time to technical experts to correct flaws, if any, in the city hub. “All metro rails in the country were commissioned section by section.”
Third metro train ready
The third train meant for the Kochi Metro is ready for despatch at Alstom’s coach factory in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh. “The trailer lorries carrying the coaches have been held up due to cyclone in Chennai. They would arrive in Kochi in another week,” said Bharat Salhotra, MD (Transport – India and South Asia) of Alstom.
Two trains that arrived here earlier this year conducted trial runs in the Muttom-Edapally corridor. Sources in KMRL said that a total of 10 metro trains would arrive in Kochi by February end.
On the proposal to deploy Alsotm’s technology that would regenerate braking energy and feed it back into the power grid, Mr. Salhotra said that discussions with KMRL are in an advanced stage. “If all works out well, Kochi Metro would be the first in India to use the energy-saving technology.”
