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| ridership = over 650,000 | annual_ridership = | chief_executive = H. K. Sharma, Chairman | headquarters = HRBC House, St. George's gate road Kolkata〔http://kmrc.in/contact.html〕 | began_operation = | operator = Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (KMRC) Kolkata Metro zone of Indian Railways (Line 1 only) | marks = | vehicles = | train_length = | headway = | system_length = | track_gauge = (Indian gauge) (Standard gauge) | ogauge = | minimum_radius_of_curvature = | el = 750 V DC through third rail | average_speed = | top_speed = | map = | map_name = | map_state = }} The Kolkata Metro or Calcutta Metro is a metro system serving the city of Kolkata and the districts of South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the first underground metro railway system in India. The network consists of one operational line (Line 1) and one under construction (Line 2), with four further lines in various stages of planning. It was the first such form of transport in India, opening for commercial services in 1984. It is the 17th zone of the Indian Railways system. ==History== After Independence in 1947, the transport problem of Kolkata drew the attention of city planners, the state government and also the government of India. It was soon realized that something had to be done and quickly in order to cope with the situation. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, first conceived in 1949, the idea of building an Underground Railway for Kolkata to try to solve the problems. A survey was done by a team of French experts, but nothing concrete came of this. Efforts to solve the problem by augmenting the existing fleet of public transport vehicles hardly helped, since roads account for only 4.2% of the surface area in Calcutta, compared with 25% in Delhi and even 30% in other cities. With a view to finding alternative solutions to alleviate the suffering of Calcuttans, the Metropolitan Transport Project (Rlys) was set up in 1969. The MTP (Rlys), with help of Soviet specialists (Lenmetroproekt) and East German engineers, prepared a master plan to provide five rapid-transit (metro) lines for the city of Kolkata, totalling a route length of 97.5 km in 1971. However, only three were selected for construction. These were: * Dum Dum - Tollygunge * Salt Lake City - Ramrajatala (truncated till Howrah Maidan) * Dakshineshwar - Thakurpukur (route changed to Joka - BBD Bagh) Of these, the highest priority was given to the busy north-south axis between Dum Dum and Tollygunge over a length of 16.45 km, and the work on this project was sanctioned on 1 June 1972. The foundation stone of the project was laid by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, on 29 December 1972 and the construction work started in 1973-74. In those early days of Kolkata Metro, the planning, thought processing, and political facilitation of the whole project was borne almost single-handedly by the then Union Railway Minister from West Bengal - A. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury - often against (and to the chagrin of) the prevailing socio-political stance of his contemporaries in the West Bengal government. From the start of construction, the project had to contend with several problems including insufficient funds (until 1977-78), a shifting of underground utilities, court injunctions, and an irregular supply of vital materials. Despite the difficulties faced, services began on 24 October 1984, with the commissioning of a partial commercial service covering a distance of 3.40 km with five stations served in between Esplanade and Bhowanipur. The first metro was driven by Tapan Kumar Nath and Sanjoy Sil. The service was quickly followed by commuter services on another 2.15 km stretch in the north between Dum Dum and Belgachhia on 12 November 1984. The commuter service was extended up to Tollygunge on 29 April 1986 covering a further distance of 4.24 km making the service available over a distance of 9.79 km and covering 11 stations. However, the services on the north section were suspended with effect from 26 October 1992, as this isolated small section was little used. After a gap of more than eight years, the 1.62 km Belgachhia-Shyambazaar section, along with the Dum Dum-Belgachhia stretch, was opened on 13 August 1994. Another 0.71 km stretch from Esplanade to Chandni Chowk was commissioned shortly afterwards, on 2 October 1994. The Shyambazaar-Shobhabazar-Girish Park (1.93 km) and Chandni Chowk-Central (0.60 km) sections were opened on 19 February 1995. Services on the entire stretch of the Metro were introduced from 27 September 1995 by bridging the vital gap of 1.80 km in the middle. 〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= History )〕 In the final stage, the extension of Line 1 to an elevated corridor from Tollygunge to New Garia was constructed and opened in two phases, Mahanayak Uttam Kumar to Kavi Nazrul in 2009 and Kavi Nazrul to Kavi Subhash in 2010. The latest extension constructed was the 2.59 km elevated corridor from Dum Dum to Noapara on 10 July 2013. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kolkata Metro」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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