The authorities are all set to start operating of a metro train on the viaduct on Sunday, touching a new milestone in the country’s first ever metro rail project.
On that day, a train will run from Uttara to Mirpur Pallabi station at 10 am. As a precautionary measure, the metro rail run from Diabari to Pallabi station in the city on Friday. Metrorail runs from 8 am to 10 am in the heart of the city. There was no problem in running the metro rail.
Metrorail Project Manager ABM Arifur Rahman said that Metrorail has been run as a precautionary measure. Metrorail runs safely from the depot to Pallabi station. While running the Metrorail, we stopped at the station and checked everything thoroughly so that there would not be any problem on Sunday.
Nine stations are being constructed for the metro railway from Diabari in Uttara to Agargaon. Preparations are being made to operate trains on the railway viaduct in at least five of these stations. The officials said that the preparations are going on even in the situation of corona infection.
City dwellers, however, may have to wait more than a year to ride the metro train as delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic forced the project authorities to revise some of its plans.
The authorities now want to make at least the first stretch — Uttara to Agargaon — of the 20.10km metro rail line operational by December next year.
Mass Rapid Transit Line-6 or MRT-6, the country’s first metro rail system, is being built from the capital’s Uttara to Motijheel at a cost of Tk 21,985 crore.
Once complete, the metro rail — with 16 stations — will be able to carry 60,000 people an hour, reducing travel time from Uttara to Motijheel to around 40 minutes. The journey now takes about two hours on a regular day.
Image: collected
