CHENNAI (Metro Rail News): Southern Railway has given their approval for handing over MRTS to CMRL, a government officials has informed. The decision was taken during a meeting which was chaired by Chief Secretary Irai Anbu on May 11.
Connecting the central business area of old Madras with the IT corridor, the MRTS has a potential capacity of 4,25,000 passengers a day. The 15-km alignment covers several significant landmarks in the city and has 18 stations. After the completion of the Phase-II extension which is a 5-km stretch, three more stations which will link the Metro corridors with MRTS and suburban rail networks will be added.
“The decision to integrate MRTS with CMRL will help the city to work on multi-modal planning better. These stations are in high potential locations and the government should ensure improving station accessibility from the neighbourhood level,” says Sivasubramaniam Jayaraman, national lead-electric mobility and transport systems and senior programme manager of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).
A government official said that now Chennai Metro could take the non-tariff revenue from stations into consideration. “A blueprint was prepared nearly 12 years ago to develop 190,000 sq m of commercial space in the nine stations, but the plan was never implemented,” said Krishna Kumar, former Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) member.
“The merger was a long-pending issue and the government should conduct a feasibility report on ensuring the same system of track and signalling can be implemented in the MRTS stretch,” said Former CMRL chief general manager Somasundaram.
