Chandigarh to get monorail very soon, Planning Started

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After Union home minister Rajnath Singh cancelled the much waited metro rail project for Chandigarh in July last year, the Chandigarh administration is now planning to have Chandigarh monorail project as an alternative model of mass transport in the city.

monorail is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail.

The Intamin Transportation Limited which is based in Switzerland has purposed & given the complete presentation regarding constructing the monorail network in Chandigarh to senior UT officers last week.

According to this proposal, the Chandigarh Monorail project will first connect the tricity i.e., Chandigarh – Panchkula – Mohali. In the first phase of this project, only 20km network is proposed.

During the presentation, the company stated that monorail has the capacity to take 10,000 to 12,000 passengers per direction/hr. The cost of construction purposed for this monorail project is around Rs 2,500 crore, this means Rs 125 crore per km (approx).

Suniti Verma, Company’s representative, said that the monorail is the best environmentally friendly transportation system that runs on clean electrical energy.

Best for Chandigarh or Not ?

Verma further said, “The best part of this project is that its viable in the tricity, because of its light-weight track system that can be easily installed into the existing infrastructure of Chandigarh,”. The Company said the monorail can be operated both automatically and manually with a driver on board.

A senior UT officer, who did not wish to be named, said the company has given its presentation and now the administration is studying the proposal in detail.

“We will have another round of meeting before giving the project a go-ahead,” said the officer.

If and when the project is approved, a technical and engineering feasibility study of the routes will be conducted followed by development and submission of a business plan and detailed project report, said sources. While private players are expected to contribute 80% cost of the project, the remaining 20% will be borne by the Chandigarh administration.

Why no to metro

It was in July last year during the home minister’s advisory committee meeting in New Delhi that Rajnath Singh said no to the metro project in Chandigarh, calling it non-viable, and asked the officers to look for alternative modes of transport.

Even the Chandigarh officers admitted that at Rs 14,000 crore, the project is not financially feasible. Also,  Punjab & Haryana both had not given their consent in writing on this.

Kirron Kher, Member of parliament (MP), had already opposed the project stating that it would uproot the city. As a solution to traffic congestion, she had proposed a ring road.

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Punjab Mirror Bureau
Punjab Mirror Bureauhttps://www.punjabmirror.com
Punjab Mirror is the independent and the only, one of its kind, online news & information portal for Punjab, Chandigarh.

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