Kolkata Metro: Kolkata Metro Railway announced the suspension of services on the entire East-West Metro corridor (Green Line) every Sunday from March 23 onwards to facilitate testing of the Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) system.
In a statement, Metro authorities said no services will be available on the Howrah Maidan–Salt Lake Sector V corridor on Sundays until further notice. Earlier, Metro services along the East-West corridor were suspended on March 8 and 9 for CBTC system testing.
The two-day suspension was the third since February as part of efforts to assess the efficacy of the signalling and communication system on the Howrah Maidan–Salt Lake Sector V stretch. The previous suspensions took place from February 13 to 16 and February 20 to 23.
"Metro will implement a complete traffic block every Sunday from March 23 to conduct CBTC system testing along the entire East-West Metro corridor (Green Line) from Howrah Maidan to Salt Lake Sector V," a spokesperson said.
In Metro Rail parlance, a traffic block means suspension of train services.At present, trains run along two disjointed sections from Sector 5 to Sealdah, and Esplanade to Howrah Maidan. Due to the cave-in during tunnelling work at Bowbazar along the Esplanade-Sealdah stretch and seepage of underground water in September 2019 as the boring machine hit an aquifer and at least two more similar incidents in subsequent years, services could not commence along the 2.5-km-long Esplanade-Sealdah stretch of the 16.6-km-long East-West corridor.