A tramway to connect Moazzam Jahi Market to Charminar? That’s proposal being thrashed out at a two-day workshop by planners and officials from Hyderabad and its sister city Bordeaux.
Showing images of sleek aerodynamic glass and chrome tramcars gliding through the streets of various cities of the world, planners and officials from Bordeaux Metropole unveiled their spiel for adopting the same in Hyderabad at the workshop here on Monday.
Easy movement
The idea of using a tramway is to complement the stillborn Charminar Pedestrianisation Project. The Telangana Government has an agreement with Bordeaux Metropole for exchanging expertise on municipal administration and sustainable development.
“We have to build the tramway not for the next election but for the next generation,” said Florence Forzy-Raffard, municipal councillor of Bordeaux as she spelled out the ground work needed to be done for the project.
“It is easy to use where children and even differently-abled find it easy to access. It is not very expensive and it is not destructive to heritage,” she said spelling out the nuanced role of community participation, engineers and what it can do to tourist potential to a city with great heritage.
“It is at an initial stage. We are just discussing to see if it can be the solution for our traffic and congestion problem in that area,” said GHMC Commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy on the sidelines of the event.