These metro stations would not be there and to be scrapped in the phase-2 CMRL project
Posted on: 12/Mar/2021 9:39:45 AM
The close distance between the metro stations is now cited as the reason for scrapping 4 metro stations!!
The stations that would be scrapped by CMRL are the metro stations at Venkatnarayana Road, T. Nagar, OMR, Semmencheri etc. The distance between them and the next is just few hundred metres. It has been brought out by some sources that CMRL officials are having discussions about scrapping 4 stations at Doveton, St Joseph College, Foreshore Estate and Natesan Park from the phase. Across the 3 corridors, there are as many as 128 metro stations. In the construction tenders floated till now, these metro stations were not mentioned. By June 2021, the construction for phase-2 would start and it would be ready by the year 2026.
An officer of CMRL pointed out that these metro stations were very close and not trying to have those stations. Taking these metro stations out of the route would save money and time for CMRL.
It is known that CMRL had made several changes to bring down the project cost from Rs 89000 crores to Rs 61843 crores. To make it easy for evacuating the passengers in the times of emergency, the metro stations in the city are generally planned for every 1 km. Truth is that these metro stations when built would be at a distance of 600 m to 850 m only.
It is now brought to light that the metro station at Natesan Park has been planned between Panagal Park and Nandanam . Point is that the distance between Panagal Park and Natesan Park is around 632 m and that between Natesan Park and Nandanam is around 625 m.
Between Sathyabhama University and Semmencheri, St Joseph’s college metro station has been planned. Truth is that this metro station would be just 825 m from the Sathyabhama University and just 805 m from the Semmencheri metro station. The distance between Doveton metro station and the station at the Purasakakkam High Road is just 614 m and between Doveton station and Perambur Barracks Road station is 829 m.
It must be taken into note that in the phase-1 except for the Central metro station and the Government Estate metro station that are locate at a distance of 1.5 km apart the rest have been built between 850 m to 1km only. To help the commuters, an emergency shaft has been built inside the May Day Park at Chintadripet for evacuating the commuters in case of emergencies. The long distance between Chennai Central metro station and Government Estate metro station has been made up by this emergency shaft.
Some time back, CMRL scrapped a maintenance depot that was planned to be built at Siruseri Sipcot and this was done to reduce the cost of the project. It was replaced by stabling lines for parking of trains after daily services.
