Travel time for students of north campus and residents of other North Delhi areas such as Model Town, Gujranwala Town, GTB Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar to Rohini, Dwarka and West Delhi will reduce considerably once the Delhi Metro’s Pink Line opens this week.

The Azadpur Metro station, which will be the first interchange station in this line will have many firsts such as long ramps to help commuters in wheelchairs to board the Metro directly and token vending machines at both entry and exits of the station.

With the Commissioner for Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) completing an inspection, the line is set to be opened for the public within a few days. After a second stretch of the line opens for public, commuters will be able to avoid Kashmere Gate and Rajiv Chowk completely as interchange stations. The existing Azadpur station is part of Delhi metro’s Yellow Line (Samaypur Badli-HUDA City Centre). A second Azadpur station coming up in the area will help act as the interchange station and cut travel time for commuters by 30 minutes. The two Azadpur stations are connected by a 193 meter long foot over bridge.

“It is a paid to paid connectivity, which means, travellers won’t have to exit the system to change for another train,” said a DMRC official.

Azadpur will be the first underground station of Line 7 as well as first interchange of the line, which starts from Majlis Park.

According to the DMRC, the construction was a difficult task since the line passes through a densely populated area.

“The tunneling between Majlis Park and Azadpur was challenging as the Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) encountered a number of hidden rocks while tunneling in this stretch. The rocks damaged the cutter heads of both the TBMs during the tunneling and it was not possible to change the damaged cutter heads of the TBM under the ground. Thus, an emergency shaft had to be made midway to retrieve the TBMs in a densely populated colony of north Delhi,” the official added.

“As the area was densely crowded, care had to be taken during the process to avoid damage by vibration. The remaining tunneling was completed by inducting additional TBMs from the other shaft made on the ramp towards the Majlis Park station,” the officer added.

The new station is located perpendicular to GT Karnal road and Outer Ring Road so there is only two entry exit -one towards GT karnal road and one towards Ring Road.

“We have also developed a drop-off point outside the station, which is away from the main road to avoid traffic congestion. There will be an auto lane also and then at the main road, people can board bus and other modes of transport. Both entry exits are within the station box so no separate land was acquired for this,” the officer said.

Another unique feature of the station is a dedicated ramp at both entry exits for the physically disabled. DMRC usually have disabled ramp along with the stairs but at this station, a long ramp has been created so that wheelchair bound travelers can reach the station area separately.

DMRC has constructed a combined station control room in this station to manage both Azadpur stations.