The planned Noapara-New Barrackpore Metro is ultimately witnessing the light of the day as Metro Railway begins Phase 2 of Yellow Line, the 3.6 km Noapara-New Barrackpore corridor through the airport. Senbo Engineering and ITD Cementation, which is additionally implementing East-West Metro, have emerged as the lowest bidders for the stretch. Once the whole Yellow Line is functioning, the southern point of Metro — New Garia or Kavi Subhas — will get linked to the northern end, Barasat. For now, it will go up to New Barrackpore. During the last two years, Metro Railway has been busy with Yellow Line’s Phase 1, which includes 6.9 km from Noapara to the airport and is observing a 2023-commissioning. But even amidst the hectic development of Phase 1, Metro Railway, the executing agency of Line 4 which has now been christened the Yellow Line, invited bids for Phase 2 — the 3.6 km underground section from airport to New Barrackpore — in January 2022. The Yellow Line or the entire Noapara extension will include 18.1 km and eventually link Barasat in the northeast suburbia with mainstream Kolkata, through the airport. But the plan is still on the drawing board. Bids could not be invited for Phase 3 or the New Barrackpore-Barasat stretch because nobody knows when the section will launch because of significant encroachment along the way. They are waiting for the state government to help them fix the encroachment problem along the Barasat stretch. Meanwhile, they have begun with Yellow Line’s Phase 2, so that New Barrackpore can be covered in the Metro network shortly, as per a senior Metro Railway official. The Metro line to New Barrackpore through Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport will have two stations — Birati and New Barrackpore. The stretch includes extremely short tunnelling. Thus, construction will be in the cut-and-cover method and not via tunnel boring. Image Source Also read: Kolkata metro witnesses growth in infrastructure, capacity expansion