Kolkata Metro Railways Commence Upgradation Work Of Tunnel Ventilation System And Environment Control System Of Blue Line Stations.

Kolkata; February 2026: The upgradation work of Tunnel Ventilation System (TVS) and Environment Control System (ECS) of Blue Line stations has begun from today i.e., on 04.02.2026 in presence of Mr. Subhransu S. Mishra, General Manager, other senior officers of Metro Railway, President and other members of MRWWO at a function held at Noapara Car shed. Once completed this work will add a new dimension in passenger comfort and safety in Blue Line of Metro Railway, Kolkata.

This work is being executed at a cost of Rs. 585 Crores, and would be completed in 04 years. This is an updated energy efficient and improved system. This covers the cooling system of 15 underground stations of Blue Line, poised to bring in changes from traditional water cool chiller to air cool chiller thereby saving of water and ultimately our environment.

The familiar scene of cooling towers outside Metro stations is going to change, post implementation. Metro Railway will be able to save 18 Crore litres of ground water consumption annually. In the present system, this amount of ground water is required to run the water cool chillers for making Metro stations cool every year. Once air cool chillers replace the water cool chillers then this huge amount of water will be saved which in turn help to protect environment and ground water resources.

In addition, Tunnel Ventilation System is also being upgraded. Till now the nostalgic 41 years old existing system facilitated tunnel cooling as the rakes were non-air-conditioned. But as Kolkata Metro Railway, Kolkata is now using AC rakes after discarding all non AC rakes, it provides the opportunity to shift to state-of-the-art TVS (Tunnel Ventilation System) to have state-of-the-art smoke extraction system as well.

In the prevailing system, forced ventilation using centrifugal fans of 110 kW at fourteen midpoints are being used. These fans rotate 24X7 hours and consume total energy of 03 crores unit annually at a cost of Rs 21.00 Crores annually. By installing Variable Frequency Drive in midpoint in 2021-2022 this consumption was reduced to half. These fans can rotate in one direction to work as exhaust fans. All these fans shall now be replaced by axial fans which are suitable for two-hour operation even if the air temperature it handles reaches 250 °C. These fans will rotate automatically when fire / smoke in tunnel occur or ambient temperature of the tunnel crosses the set limit or concentration of CO2 or sub-soil temperature inside the tunnels crosses the set limit.

This work will be executed by an Indian subsidiary of a Japanese company. This holding company has already commissioned ECS and TVS systems in more than one hundred underground Metro stations in Singapore Metro.

This will ensure improved fire safety and save Rs.21 Cr annual electricity bill as well as reduce carbon footprint by 23,000 Metric Tons annually.

Team Maverick.