
Chennai Metro Rail
News taken from Business line http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/logistics/chennai-metro-rising-will-it-ease-road-congestion/article4614479.ece?ref=wl_industry-and-economy
The first train for the Chennai Metro Rail getting ready at the Alstom facility in Brazil.
Sriram Amarnath, a software engineer, has just returned to Chennai from the US after a gap of nearly five years. He was upset to see the congestion outside the airport due to the construction work being undertaken for the Chennai Metro Rail project.
But as he moves into the city, he is awed by the magnitude and pace of construction of the Rs 14,000-crore project, which will help decongest the city roads and take care of the growing demand for public transport.
With the city’s current population of over 50 lakh, expected to reach 1.2 crore by 2026, Chennai is struggling to keep pace with the ever-increasing traffic demand.
In the past, every household used to have a vehicle. But today, every member of the household has a vehicle, putting enormous pressure on roads.
INTEGRATED SYSTEM
Further, over 3,200 buses move nearly 52 lakh people every day. All efforts of the Government to meet the increasing demand seem to be falling short.
Thus, the Chennai Metro could become an important public transport system in the future.
It is going to be part of an integrated multi-modal transport system, along with the planned Mono Rail project, which is still in the drawing-board stage. This is in addition to the strengthening of the sub-urban rail service, the Mass Rapid Transit System, and the Metropolitan Transport System.
The Tamil Nadu Government gave its in-principle approval for the Chennai Metro’s initial corridors in October 2007 and the Centre gave its nod in January 2009. The project envisages creation of two initial corridors under the proposed phase-1 with a total of 45.1 km. The corridor from Washermenpet to Airport will be 23.1 km and the other corridor from Chennai Central to St Thomas Mount will be 22-km long.
About 14 km of Corridor-1 from Washermanpet to Saidapet and 9.7 km of Corridor-2 from Chennai Central to Anna Nagar 2nd Avenue will be underground and the remaining portion will be elevated, says information available on the Chennai Metro Web site.
Huge tunnel-boring machines, including some Chinese-made, are continuously drilling the city’s hard soil to enable air-conditioned trains to criss-cross the city underground in the next two to three years.
As on March 31, nearly 10 per cent of the tunnelling work for the project has been completed. Out of the total 27,220 metres, tunnelling work of 2,731 metres has been completed.
Projects worth over Rs 10,000 crore have been awarded to various companies from countries like India, Russia, Germany, Japan, France and UK.
Share of public transport
The Tamil Nadu Government’s plan is to increase the share of the public transport system to 46 per cent from the present seven per cent by 2026. The Chennai Metro project will play a huge role in this change.
Consider this data. The project is expected to remove around 13 lakh passengers from the road by 2026. Every year, it will save around 100 deaths happening due to road accidents and another 500 non-fatal accidents.
And, for a passenger travelling from the Koyambdeu market to Alandur, the journey time will come down to 16 minutes from over an hour, currently.Similarly, it will take just 40 minutes to reach the airport from Washermenpet in North Chennai, against nearly two hours by road, and an hour by rail.
The Chennai Metro is following the example of the Delhi Metro Ltd, which, incidentally, is the primary consultant for the project in the first phase.
According to the plan, the first metro train should start plying in 2015. Incidentally, the train, which is getting ready at Alstom’s manufacturing plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is expected to arrive in the city in June.
Meanwhile, out of total plinth track of 10,577 track metre between Vadapalani and Koyambedu, work on about 9,800 track metre has been completed. A total of 1,586 joints for welding of tracks have been done, the Chennai Metro said. Interestingly, the metro will go up to the airport. Sriram, who is leaving for the US in two weeks, hopes that he will return to the city in three to four years to take the metro and reach his home in the heart of the city.