The outlook of one of the busiest crossings in Asia —ITO — is soon to get a makeover with the upcoming Metro station. With the completion of 85 per cent civil construction work, ITO Metro station is expected to be thrown open to the public by July next year.
Once operational, the station will bring relief to thousand of office-goers who have to pass through ITO, which is dotted with scores of Government and private offices. The upcoming Metro station will immensely help decongest the intersection that witnesses perpetual traffic bottlenecks.
The crucial Central Secretariat to Mandi House stretch on the upcoming Central Secretariat to Kashmere Gate corridor will be operational by March next year. “With the progress of the civil construction work at ITO, the station can be thrown open to the public in another three to four months after the opening of the Mandi House stretch. Since ITO is the following station on the corridor, it can be made operational soon after. Since it is an uphill task to expand Delhi Metro network further by 140 km, we want to open the section in segments so that everything does not come crashing in at the end,” said Mangu Singh, Managing Director, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
For the construction of the underground line, one tunnel boring machine (TBM) is at work between ITO and Delhi Gate and another will be lowered by the end of the month. The station is pegged to be one of the busiest on the corridor with an expected footfall of 40,000 passengers daily as per the Detailed Project Report (DPR).
DMRC will start trial runs on the Central Secretariat to Mandi House section on December 30. “The section will be opened for commuter operations by March, 2014. This section will tremendously help in decongesting the busy Rajiv Chowk interchange station by taking away as much as 40 per cent of the passenger traffic from it. The section will provide a direct interchange to the commuters on the Blue line (Dwarka to Noida/Vaishali) from the Violet line (Central Secretariat to Badarpur) as they will not have to change trains twice at Central Secretariat and Rajiv Chowk. Since we have trains running till Central Secretariat it won’t be a problem to throw open the section by first quarter of the next year,” added the Delhi Metro chief.
The ITO Metro station will have six access points -- police headquarters, Institution of Engineers, Doll’s Museum, Indian National Science Academy and between the CAG and UGC offices on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg. Apart from this, DMRC is constructing two subways - one on the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg and another to connect Delhi Police Headquarters and the building of the Institute of Engineers on either side of the Indraprastha Marg to facilitate a safe pedestrian movement. The entire corridor from Central Secretariat to Kashmere Gate is set to get operational by the end of the year 2015.