The ministry of urban development has accorded an ‘in-principle’ approval to the Tamil Nadu government for taking up the Chennai Monorail Project (CMP) phase-1. Under the project, monorail services will be provided between Poonamalle and Kathipara with a link from Porur to Vadapalani with a total length of 20.68 km, with an estimated cost of R3,267 crore.
As per the approval, the project would be implemented under design, build, finance, operate and transfer model with the entire funding coming from the state government and state government agencies along with public-private partnership without any financial support from the government of India.
The approval comes with conditions by the Centre to the Tamil Nadu government basically on ensuring price-based measures to promote ridership as part of an integrated traffic rationalisation plan for the city. The state has been told to make a suitable arrangement, independent of special purpose vehicle for periodic fare revision for other competing modes while providing multimodal integration, including suburban railways to ensure network connectivity in the region to provide seamless travel.
The Tamil Nadu government is also required to set up a unified metropolitan transport authority, duly backed by legislation, to facilitate coordinated planning and implementation of urban transport projects and the government of Tamil Nadu and the central government would set up a joint oversight mechanism, the details of which would be incorporated in the MoU to be signed between the two.
