Metros and light rail Indian metros: grand
On the face of it, an urban transport revolution is underway in India. Four cities already have metros, while seven more are building metro lines, and another nine cities are at the planning stage. But as Raghav Thakur reports progress is often painfully slow.
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EPORTS by the McKinsey Global Institute and others suggest that annual investments worth a huge Rs 1 trillion ($US 16bn) are envisaged over the next 20 years to ramp up India’s creaking urban transport infrastructure, with a substantial chunk likely to be directed towards rail-based systems. So-called Regional Rapid Transport Systems (RRTS) to connect metropolitan centres with adjoining cities and towns by dedicated rail corridors are also planned in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi, among other centres. Institutional, financial, administrative or legislative mechanisms are now being put in place to ensure fast implementation of metro and monorail projects.
So, has an unstoppable process of
metro rail construction across India been initiated?
“For the moment, it might be prudent
to temper such enthusiasm with a degree of caution,” says Mr Krishan Lal Thapar of the New Delhi-based Asian Institute of Transport. Such circumspection is borne out of several factors. For one, both the Ministry of Railways (MoR) and the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) have continued to remain engaged in a turf war to control activities relating to metro projects. As the agency for metro projects, the MoUD has proposed amendments to the Metro Railways (Operations and Maintenance) Act 2002 to ensure that urban transport projects are
delinked from the MoR. Whereas the MoR, which is empowered under the Act to certify technical and safety aspects, has been stiffly resisting the amendments.
In a series of meetings with MoR
officials in late 2013, MoUD officials proposed amendments to the 2002 Act to authorise it to build metro corridors not only in the urban centres, but in any municipality in the country. The MoUD also wants authority to run freight trains on metro lines. “If amendments proposed by the MoUD are carried through by parliament, the ministry would emerge as a business competitor to the railways,” a MoR official said. But it is unlikely that amendments to the Metro Rail Act will be carried out by parliament before the national elections which will take place in April or May.
This raises another question: is there more hype than substance to the
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