Metro Rail chief E. Sreedharan

CHENNAI: "The Tamil Nadu Government's decision to go for monorail for Chennai city to meet its growing traffic needs is most `unfortunate' as it will not help meet the transport requirement of city commuters," says Delhi Metro Rail Corporation managing director E. Sreedharan.

Already the State had burnt its fingers with the "ill-advised" mass rapid transit system (MRTS) and the monorail would be its another "ill-advised venture," he said in a letter to the State Government.

The State, which had asked the DMRC to submit a comprehensive report for a rail based metro system for Chennai, dashed off a letter to the Corporation recently asking it to stop all its investigations and surveys.

Expressing surprise over the decision, Mr. Sreedharan suspected that the State had been "influenced by monorail lobby with its tall claims and false promises."

The lobby, the letter noted, had already stalled the metro project in Bangalore.

The monorail system might be good for amusement parks, airport connections or tourist centres where ticket charges could be 5 to 10 times the normal charge in an urban transport system.

Nowhere in the world a monorail had been constructed at a cost of less than Rs. 125 crore per km.

Its capacity was only about 10,000 to 15,000 per hour per direction although the lobby might claim a capacity of 25,000 to 30,000 phpd.

Mr. Sreedharan asked how could the monorail system be viable when its carrying capacity was only one-third of a metro system with 25 to 30 per cent more capital cost.

Promoters of monorail would always claim that the capital cost was only half of a metro system and its carrying capacity was the same as a metro system. But these facts had not been proved anywhere in the world.

As monorail was always elevated and could not go underground, the depots for stabling and servicing monorail trains during nights would be very complicated and costly compared to a depot for a metro system, which could be located on the ground.

The operating cost of monorail would be 50 per cent more than a metro on account of large number of pneumatic wheels.

Moreover, the entire signalling as well as trains had to be imported, he pointed out.

He regretted that the decision had been taken without conducting a detailed survey and project report.

How could any party bid for the system without a detailed project report? The fundamental requirement for bidding on the design, build, own, operate and transfer (DBOOT) basis was the number of commuters along the proposed routes. Who had got these traffic figures for 300 km which was proposed to be covered by monorail? This would mean that the bidder would have to make many assumptions and had to attach a number of commercial and financial conditions.

The bidding process would take at least 12 to 15 months and the successful bidder would take another 12 to 18 months for formalising the scheme to a financial closure. In the end the State Government would find the scheme unviable. Thus two to three years of valuable time would be lost, the Delhi Metro chief said.

Suggesting that only a medium capacity metro system would be ideal for Chennai, he said it would be the long-term solution to solve the transportation problems of the city. "This would also be in line with the recommendations of the Planning Commission, which had recommended a metro system for all cities with a population of five million and above in its 10th Plan document."

Mr. Sreedharan also made it clear that he had no business interest in promoting a metro system for Chennai. But he only wanted to warn the Government about the many pitfalls with the monorail project which it was planning to promote.

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