Public commute has always been a hellish experience for Kochiites — rude bus staff, packed trains, frightful boat rides, and auto drivers that rip off passengers. So those who could, took their cars and bikes out of the garage and flooded the streets.
To bring users back to public transit, it has to be pleasant and efficient. Roughly four years from today, commuting could be something close to that.
Paving the way for it, the civil works for the Rs 5,182-crore Kochi Metro is set to commence here on Friday.
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Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will inaugurate the works at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium, by symbolically switching on piling works in a 200-metre-long stretch that has been barricaded near Changmapuzha Park in Edappally. The beginning of piling will be telecast live at the stadium.
Once the piling begins, the focus will also be on rolling out pre-cast girders, for which Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) is scouting for land. Vacant land on HMT premises at Kalamassery and a few acres owned by Cochin Port Trust in Wellingdon Island are among those identified for the purpose. It is here that the pre-cast pier caps that will be placed atop the metro’s pillars will be made.
The HMT land will come in handy for casting the structures for the metro’s Aluva to International Stadium stretch works, while the port’s land will primarily be used for the work from the stadium up to Pettah. The civil works on the 25-km alignment is set to get over in two years, while another year will be set apart for installing signals, the third traction, trial runs.
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Sources in the DMRC said the cylindrical pillars that would support the metro’s girders would have a diameter of 1.80 metres. Altogether, the pillars will occupy 2.10 metres of the road’s width. The additional 30 cm will be for building a protection barrier around each pillar.
The 12th Director Board of KMRL held here a fortnight ago had opted for trains having three coaches, with the average speed being 34 km per hour.
Each train would have a ‘crush load’ of 1,000 people and would ply every five minutes in each direction. The trains would cover the Aluva-MG Road-Pettah stretch in 45 minutes. Space equivalent to around one sixth of the passenger capacity will be reserved for women.
Tripunithura extension
On the delay in deciding on extending the metro up to Tripunithura in the project’s phase one, sources said the State and Centre must take a call on this since a huge number of commuters originate from Tripunithura and not from Pettah, the present terminal station. A terminal station can well be built at vacant, unused land owned by Steel Authority of India (SAIL) near Tripunithura railway station.
Metroman visits sites
DMRC’s Principle Advisor E. Sreedharan visited the agency’s work sites at the North overbridge and Edapally. He also visited MG Road, where locating and shifting underground pipes and cables are expected to be a challenge.
Time is money
Kochi Metro’s work was scheduled to begin in 2006, so as to commission the project by 2010. Procedural and political wrangles delayed the Union Cabinet’s nod for the project. A few stakeholders from the Centre and State advocated private participation, which was termed as not feasible by experts in the sector and the DMRC.
This prompted the State government to stick to a Centre-State joint venture scheme, on the lines of the Chennai Metro. The project cost rose from the Rs. 2,239 crore proposed in 2005 to Rs.5,181 crore in 2012. This includes the cost of land acquisition and utility shifting.
The Centre’s expected share in the project is Rs.1,002.23 crore (approximately 19.3% of total project cost), while the State’s share is Rs.2,009.56 crore (approximately 38.7%) and the loan from funding agencies Rs.2,170 crore (about 42%).
The average cost per km (including civil works, coaches, signals, stations etc.) is expected to be Rs.202.31 crore.