Delhi Metro’s Central Secretariat-Qutub Minar corridor will be inaugurated on Friday facilitating a smooth ride for lakhs of commuters in south Delhi.
This will be the longest line of the Delhi Metro spanning 45 kms connecting north Delhi with the millennium city of Gurgaon.
The 12.53-km corridor will be integrated with the Qutub Minar-HUDA City Centre line and both will ultimately be integrated with the Central Secretariat-Jehangirpuri line.
Union Urban Development Minister S Jaipal Reddy will inaugurate the corridor and flag-off the first train from the Udyog Bhawan Metro station in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.
The line will be thrown open to the public from 3 PM on Friday, a DMRC spokesman said.
The new line will provide lakhs of south Delhi residents a comfortable journey they had been waiting for.
The entire line running from Jehangirpuri-Huda City Centre in Gurgaon will consist of 25 kms of underground tunnels and stations apart from 20 kms of elevated Metro section covering a total distance of 45 kms in 80 minutes.
There will be 34 stations on this line out of which 20 of the stations are underground while 14 are elevated, the spokesman said, adding that DMRC plans to run 36 to 40 trains on this line.
Once the new line becomes operational, it will take less than an hour for commuters to reach the Millennium City of Gurgaon from Connaught Place as compared to at least 90 minutes by road.
The entire 45 km from Jehangirpuri to Gurgaon will be covered in just over 80 minutes.
The line was scheduled to open by the end of August. This will be the second line where the DMRC will miss its originally-set deadline. Earlier, the Metro had missed the deadline on the Yamuna Bank-Noida line.
The Central Secretariat-HUDA City Centre line, built at a total cost of Rs 3,720 crore, is expected to add over 3.4 lakh people to the Metro system by 2011.
Now, the DMRC has only two lines to complete before the Commonwealth Games in October. They are Central Secretariat-Badarpur and New Delhi-Airport Express Lines.