About us
Who is behind kolkatametro.org, how we check what we publish, and what we found wrong on our own pages.
An independent guide to the Kolkata Metro
We are a small independent group. Some of us know Kolkata and use the metro daily; others build websites and web tools. kolkatametro.org exists because the practical information about this network — which is now five lines and 55 stations, and changed more between 2020 and 2025 than in the previous thirty years — was scattered, and a lot of what was published about it was simply out of date.
So we put it in one place: a page for each of the 55 stations, a page per line, the network map as a PDF, the timetable, the fares and the Smart Card, a route planner that works out journey time and interchanges, and a set of guides for getting to the places visitors actually go. The site is free, asks for no sign-up, and runs in English and Bengali.
This is an independent site, not the official one. We are not part of Metro Railway, Kolkata or of Indian Railways. We do not sell tickets, and we cannot help with Smart Cards, refunds or lost property — for those, use the customer service counter at any station.
Where the data comes from
The station list, the line topology, the fares and the operating hours come from the operator. For the per-station detail — opening dates, structure, platform layout, official station codes, accessibility — we use the Wikipedia station records and, crucially, cross-check every opening date against the opening timeline of its line. That cross-check is not a formality. It is what caught the errors described below.
Three things we found wrong on our own site
This section exists because we would rather show the corrections than claim we never needed any. In August 2026 we rebuilt every station page after checking it against the sources above, and found this:
27 of the 55 opening dates were wrong
Each station had been given the date its line opened rather than the date its own section did. Central said 24 October 1984; it actually opened on 19 February 1995. Mahanayak Uttam Kumar said 2009; it opened in 1986 and was the southern terminus for twenty-three years. All 55 are now dated from the line timelines.
Every station claimed step-free access — 12 do not have it
The old pages stated that all Kolkata Metro stations are wheelchair-accessible. The station records say otherwise: 12 stations are recorded as not having step-free access to the platform, all of them in the 1984–1995 tunnel, and 4 more have no record either way. A false "yes" here fails exactly the reader who most needs the answer. Each page now says what is on record for that station, including when nothing is.
The number of station entrances was invented
Each page showed a count of entrances. There were only two values across 55 stations — 2 and 4 — and they tracked the station type, not any source: through stations got 2, terminals and interchanges got 4. It was a derived number wearing the clothes of a fact. It has been removed, and replaced with the opening year, which is real.
Two smaller things went with them: seven terminal stations listed themselves as their own adjacent stop, and all 55 pages said that historic tram routes served the streets around them. Kolkata’s tram network is down to two routes — 5 to Shyambazar and 25 to Gariahat — so that was true of two stations and wrong about the other fifty-three.
What we will not publish
Choosing not to publish is an editorial decision too. Where there is no reliable source we leave the gap and say so, instead of filling it with something plausible:
No live train times
Metro Railway, Kolkata does not publish a real-time feed, and no third party has a legitimate one. Nothing on this site is labelled "live": the times shown are the published timetable, and the route planner returns an estimate.
No lift status
Lifts and escalators go out of service and there is no published feed of their state. We record what access a station is documented to have; we cannot tell you whether the lift is working this morning.
No entrance counts, no invented platform data
If the record does not state how many platforms a station has, the row simply does not appear. Forty-one of the 55 have a documented platform layout; the other fourteen show nothing rather than a guess.
Corrections
We get things wrong, and the network changes: lines open, fares are revised, stations are renamed. When a report reaches us we check it against the operator or the line record and then correct the page. Telling us about a mistake is the single most useful thing a reader can do — write to [email protected] with the page link. We normally reply within 24 to 48 hours.
How the site is funded
The site is free to read. Hosting and development are paid for by advertising. Advertising does not influence the content: we take nothing from Metro Railway, Kolkata, from any operator or from any ticket seller, we do not place paid links inside the text, and we do not sell reader data. If a page ever carries a commercial link it will be labelled as one.
Frequently asked questions
Who is behind this site
This site is run by the team at GoRandom, a small group based in the Basque Country in Spain who do two things that go together better than they sound: travel, and build websites.
We were in Kolkata in February 2026, and the city guide on gorandom.es came out of that trip. We liked it enough to want to go back, and after enough hours spent staring at network maps and comparing travel passes this turned up: a site about nothing except how you actually get around here.
The other half of what we know how to do is web development, and this site is the excuse to put the two together. We do not leave it sitting there: every fare and every timetable carries its source and the date we checked it, and they get revised when the operator changes something. The last thorough revision was in August 2026: the station pages shared nearly two thirds of their sentences with each other, and they were rewritten one by one so that each says something about its own station.
He decides what goes up, checks the data before it does, and answers the email. If you find a fare that has expired or a timetable that no longer holds, there is a specific person to write to.