The DMRC resumed the last leg of works on the Kochi Metro’s Thykoodam-Pettah corridor on Thursday, after a month’s lull following the Covid lockdown. All civil, signalling and telecommunication works on the 1.5-km-long corridor was halted on March 22 following the lockdown.
“We resumed the work from Thursday using the 100-odd workers who stayed back in Kochi. They are engaged in finishing works of Pettah metro station. These works, including of entry/exit to the station, will get over by the first week of May. It will be followed by inspection of the corridor by the Commissioner for Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) for issuing safety certificate,” metro sources said.
A bulk of the workers were mobilised from the DMRC’s workforce who were engaged in building a bridge at Champakkara. Deployment of new labourers, especially from other States, would involve the mandatory quarantine period and this would delay the works. Prior to beginning work, the station and related work sites were sanitised as per the mandatory safety procedure. All workers have been provided masks and told to adhere to social distancing norms, the sources said.
The pending two lanes of the four-lane Champakkara bridge would be completed by August. This portion of the bridge was to be opened to vehicles in June, while the metro’s Pettah extension was scheduled for opening in the first week of April.
With works resuming at Pettah station, the CMRS, who was scheduled to inspect the corridor on March 25 and 26, would do so post the lockdown period. This would be followed by service trials, wherein trains would operate at 25 kmph speed for up to a month. Trial runs on the corridor had begun earlier this year.
The DMRC would thus complete the 25-km-long Aluva-Pettah corridor in over six years. The metro agency began scaling down its office staff here after the Maharaja’s Ground-Thykoodam extension was commissioned in September 2019. The KMRL took over metro works in the Pettah-SN Junction stretch in 2019, following which piling work is under way.
