VISAKHAPATNAM (Metro Rail News): Amaravati Rail Corporation Limited, which is executing the Vizag metro rail project, has prepared a metro rail master plan for the area under the aegis of the Visakhapatnam Metropolitan Region Development Authority (VMRDA) at the directions of the state government.
Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development Botcha Satyanarayana announced on Saturday that Visakhapatnam Metro Rail Project will be taken up in three phases during which work on corridors in different routes would be commenced.
The main corridor would be from Kurmanapalem to Madhurawada. While one route will go to East Point Colony, the other to Old Post Office, the Minister stated.
Surveying the different routes for the project, the Minister stated that a comprehensive plan would soon be readied to take up the metro rail project in the city at an estimated cost of Rs 8,300 crore. Further, he mentioned that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was according to top priority to developing Visakhapatnam on the lines of Mumbai and Chennai.
The 140-km-long Vizag metro rail network is proposed to be executed in three phases over a period of 10 years. In the first phase of the project, the highway corridor will be extended to the Vizag Steel Plant, instead of ending at Gajuwaka. This will increase the length of the highway corridor from 30.8 km (Kommadi to Gajuwaka) to 34.2 km (Kommadi to Steel Plant).
The bidding process for the 43km-long metro rail project began in September 2017. According to the conditions of the bidding process, the AMRC has the right to increase or decrease the length of the project by 15 per cent.
Therefore, at the direction of the state government, the AMRC has decided to extend the project to 46.42km. The length of the other two corridors— Old Post Office Junction to Gurudwara Junction (5.29km) and Thatchipalem to China Waltair (6.91km) will remain as per the original plan.
The second phase of the project will cover 77.31km and the third phase will cover 16.4km running from Rushikonda to Bheemili.
Urban development minister Botcha Satyanarayana said that the tendering process will begin in the next few weeks. “The state government is keen on launching the project as early as possible,” he said.
The various proposals under the project also include trackless metro trains on the beachfront in the second and third phases. The proposal for trackless metro trains is intended at increasing the aesthetic of the beach stretch. The trackless metro corridor will have almost invisible railway lines on the flooring which get operated by magnetic strips and sensors. AMRC officials said that the 140km-long project could be taken up in a mixed-model system with some having elevated corridors and some having other models.
