Stations on the Aqua Line’s Greater Noida corridor from Sector 51 to Knowledge Park V will have four floors, officials in the Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) said. The four storey metro station buildings will have shops and other commercial establishments that will help NMRC earn revenue.
As of now, NMRC earns its revenue only through tickets. As it does not have a direct interface with Delhi Metro, footfall is affected considerably. According to rough estimates, metro coaches on Noida had been ferrying about 25,000-30,000 passengers daily in the months preceding the lockdown.
“As of now, we are considering such a model for stations on the Greater Noida corridor. If this works out, we may replicate it in the other extended routes too,” said Ritu Maheshwari, the NMRC director. Aqua Line has three extensions in the pipeline.
While the plan for the Greater Noida corridor has already been approved by the cabinet and tenders are expected to be issued in a week, the route between Sector 142 and Botanical Garden stations has been finalised and is awaiting the NMRC board’s approval.
The third route, from Boraki to Metro Depot, is still in the planning stages. Work on the Greater Noida corridor will start before the two other routes because its plan has already been approved by the cabinet.
The Greater Noida corridor will be built in two phases, the first one will be 9.6km long from Sector 51 to Greater Noida 2. It will have five stations, sectors 122, 123, Greater Noida sectors 2, 4 and Ecotech 12, and is estimated to cost Rs 430 crore.
All these stations will be on an elevated platform and are expected to be built by 2022. The second phase will have four stations, Greater Noida sectors 3, 10 and 12, and Knowledge Park 5.