This Article is From Feb 05, 2011

Metro corridor to Delhi airport ready for action

New Delhi: After missing three deadlines, Delhi Metro's high-speed Airport Express Line will finally roll out by February 20 once the CISF takes over the security of the corridor, fulfilling Delhiites' dream of enjoying a hassle-free ride to the IGI.

The country's first such corridor, which connects the city's main shopping centre of Connaught Place to the Indira Gandhi International Airport, will also have a formal inauguration, probably in March, though commercial operations will start before February 20.

Also the first corridor in the country to come up on the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model and built at a cost of Rs 5,700 crore, it will allow fliers to check-in their baggage at three city stations - New Delhi, Shivaji Stadium and Dhaula Kuan.

Passengers can even check the status of their flights at these swanky stations. To begin with, only a few airlines will set up their counters but the Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd, the consortium that will run the Line, is confident that others will follow suit.

Inspecting the line a day after the Centre formally announced that its security will be handled by the CISF, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Delhi Metro's Managing Director E Sreedharan announced that the line will begin operations once the CISF moves in.

"The Line is ready (for operations). It is very good, modern and the only corridor in the country that connects the city with airport. It has been built very beautifully," she told reporters.

"The formal opening of the Line will take a month's time," she said.

Sreedharan said trains will start running on the corridor once the CISF moves in with their security apparatus.

"They are expected to move within a week's time. Immediately after that the Line will start running trains," he said.

The Line promises to take passengers from Connaught Place to the airport in just 20 minutes as against 40 minutes by road with 3 stoppages in between. Infrastructure at the stations is ready and the train will initially run at a speed of 105 km per hour.

A senior official of the Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL) said the Line is likely to be made operational between February 15 and February 20.

Though the Line received a formal clearance from the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) on January 10, it could not be opened due to uncertainty over who will guard it.

The Line had also failed a safety test, first for any Metro corridor, in September last year.

While the Centre and DMRC wanted CISF to guard the corridor like any other Metro line in the capital, the DAMEPL wanted to deploy private security guards on the Line.

After much deliberation, the government yesterday formally asked CISF to move in and take over the security of the corridor.
.