Punekars may soon heave a sigh of relief as the Metro passenger services from Garware College to Ruby Hall Clinic and Phugewadi to Civil Court at Shivajinagar may become operational on 1 August.
Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha-Metro) officials are hoping that both stretches will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 August when he will be visiting Pune to receive the Lokmanya Tilak award.
The Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS) completed the final inspection of two crucial metro stretches last week and is expected to give safety compliance certificate in this week that will validate safety and reliability norms of metro service on the two sections, paving the way for launch of commercial operations.
Pune Metro Project
Pune Metro Rail Project consists of two corridors, north-south corridor (Purple line) and east-west corridor (Aqua line), with a total length of 33.2 km and 30 stations.
The 17.5-km-long north-south (NS) corridor from PCMC to Swargate has 14 stations. It passes through the industrial area of Pimpri-Chinchwad and further into old Peth areas of the Pune city.
The north-south corridor includes a 11.4-km-long elevated stretch and a 6.1-km underground section between Range Hills and Swargate.
The fully elevated East-West (EW) corridor starts from Vanaz Depot in east and goes upto Ramwadi. There are a total of 16 stations on this stretch and total length of this corridor is 15.7 km.
Pune Metro has two maintenance depots for up keep of trains. The depot on NS corridor at Range Hills is named as Range Hills car depot and the depot on EW corridor at Vanaz is named as Hill View Park car depot.
It was in 2022 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated two stretches – one from PCMC headquarters in Pimpri to Phugewadi on NS corridor and the other from Vanaz to Garware college on the EW corridor.
New Area on Metro Map
The new section between Phugewadi and Civil Court station is 6.9 km long having four stations. When the inauguration of Phugewadi- Civil Court stretch, the trains will run from Pimpri to Civil Court on the NS Corridor.
The Garware College to Ruby Hall Clinic station section is 4.7 km long with seven stations with some of them being underground.
The new sections connect the important places of the city like Shivajinagar, Civil Court, Pune Municipal Corporation office, Pune RTO and Pune Railway Station.
Maha-Metro officials said that the remaining sections between Ruby Hall Clinic station and Ramwadi station and Civil Court station to Swargate station will be completed by December 2023.
