UP Mulls more Metro and Monorail projects

With new Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav prioritising the mono rail and metro rail projects for major cities in Uttar Pradesh, officials are working overtime to prepare a feasibility report on the projects. Officials say the report would be with the chief minister’s office in three weeks.

Orders have been issued to check the 'soil concentration'– a major benchmark for the rail project - in Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra and Varanasi, for which the rail projects are being conceived.

Officials in the urban development department are exploring two options - direct funding by the state and union governments (as in the case of the Delhi Metro Rail project) or a public-private partnership (PPP) model (as in the case of Mumbai) - while preparing the feasibility report.

A separate team from the housing department is working on the proposed routes that should be considered for the rail projects, keeping in mind the traffic bottlenecks and an objective assessment of the ground realities.