KOLKATA: East-West Metro authorities have drawn up a blueprint of a seven-story evacuation shaft in Bowbazar to be used by commuters in case of an exigency after Metro operations commence between Sealdah and Esplanade. Kolkata News Today
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The shaft has been designed to replace three cross-passages that were first planned to link the east- and west-bound cross-passage coverts as escape routes. These were ditched after the construction of a cross passage under Madan Dutta Lane touched off subsidence last October. The other cross-passengers were to be erected below Hidaram Banerjee Lane and the Bank of India. Cross-passages are constructed at intervals of 250m in an underground member of a Metro line to allow passengers to move from a lair where there's fire or bank to the other bone. They can also use the walkway along that lair wall to reach westbound India. The cross-passages are integral to the safety condition of constructing an underground Metro design.
To give an indispensable escape route, the authorities have now designed the 20m-deep shaft with 10 levees to be constructed next to the TBM birth shaft under Durga Pituri Lane.
“ The evacuation staircase next to the west-bound-drill cross-passages lair will be 4mx8m. Since the distance between the two coverts is 6m, we will have to only produce a 2m connection to link it with the east-bound lair. This will be less parlous than trying to drill cross-passages in this previous drill cross-passages soil that has formerly touched off three cases of subsidence, ” said a functionary.
Work on the evacuation well is anticipated to start in April and will be concluded in four months.
E-W Metro officers said with the three delve-in incidents formerly recorded, the Commissioner of Railway Safety shouldn't have any expostulation to the exit shaft mentioned in the law for the construction of underground Metro lines.
The authorities will, still, have to inform the state fire department about the change of plan because it's they who'll be called in to deliver passengers or fight a fire if an exigency occurs.