Bowbazar Metro work to resume soon

Kolkata: Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) has planned to resume the East-West Metro work that caused water seepage below Durga Pituri Lane on Sept 5 in the next two or three days. The incident had led to the evacuation of 52 residents, whom KMRC—the implementing agency of the work— hopes to bring back on Oct 1.
Speaking to TOI on Saturday, officials said work on removing the secant piles inside the under-construction egress shaft at Bowbazar’s Durga Pituri Lane will begin after the ongoing grouting to further strengthen the soil is over.“We expect to start the job of cutting off the secant piles in the next two or three days,” said an official. The egress shaft, through which passengers will climb up to safety during emergencies like fire, is mandatory for launching East-West Metro’s unfinished 2.5km Esplanade-Sealdah section. It is being built in the same subsidence-prone site, where at least 25 houses had collapsed and several others were damaged during tunnelling work on Aug 31, 2019. The secant piles or cylindrical foundational structures were drilled into the earth to support the newly-constructed cross-passage linking the twin East-West Metro tunnels and the egress shaft. Cross-passages are walkways built in underground Metro for passengers to switch tunnels. The passage has been linked successfully with the east-bound (Salt Lake-bound) tunnel, but to connect it with the west-bound (Howrah-bound) one, the secant piles will have to be removed. Water started seeping while this work was on. Currently, elaborate grouting or pouring of concrete solution is on to guard against water seepage.