The Chennai Metro Rail’s efforts at consuming smaller parcels of land and making do with smaller stations in the phase I extension project seems to have drawn admiration from officials of other Metro Rail systems.
According to officials of the CMRL, engineers from the Mumbai Metro Rail and the Bengaluru Metro Rail will come down to the city and look at how smaller stations are constructed.
“At a board meeting recently they expressed interest to see how we are executing the phase I extension project and constructing compact stations. The officials plan to visit us in a few weeks,” a CMRL official said. The phase I extension project, covering 9 km in the dense areas of north Chennai, will have stations with a length of 170-180 m. This is in stark contrast to the phase I project, where the station length is nearly 230 to 250 m.
Station length
Two stations of phase I project — the Chennai Central and AG-DMS stations — have a length of 380 m.
“For building larger stations, we require more land. In the phase I project, we had problems acquiring land in some parts of the city. So, when a major portion of phase I project was getting over, and when we began work for the phase I extension project, we decided to decrease the length of stations because we knew it will be very difficult to acquire more land in a congested area like north Chennai.
“So, we cut down the length of the station by 25-30%,” he added.
While the Mumbai Metro Rail’s station size is around 240-250 m, the Bengaluru Metro Rail’s station size varies between 175m and 240m depending on the size and location. But this doesn’t mean there will be a compromise on any of the facilities for passengers, sources said.
