A 28-km monorail, an elevated rail-based mass rapid transit system (MRTS), has been mooted on the Pallippuram-Uloor-M.G.Road-Thampanoor-Karamana-Balaramapuram stretch of the capital.
The first phase of the monorail to be executed by Kerala Monorail Corporation Ltd (KMCL) will be from Technocity, near Pallippuram, to Karamana, as per the Detailed Project Report (DPR) prepared by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), official sources told The Hindu .
The depot of the monorail will be at Karamana as adequate land had been identified by the side of the National Highway.
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The National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (Natpac), which prepared the feasibility report for the monorail, had proposed MRTS for the 41.8 km Mangalapuram-Ulloor–Overbridge-Killippalam-Neyyattinkara corridor.
The Natpac suggested the 22.2-km phase from Mangalapuram to Thampanoor as the first phase and the 19.6 km from Thampanoor to Neyyattinkara as the second phase. Sources said the DMRC had decided to scale down the distance and shift the depot from Thampanoor citing technical reasons.
The project is being chalked out in a way that it can be extended to Neyattinkara in the subsequent phases in view of rapid urbanisation, Minister for Public Works V.K. Ebrahim Kunju said.
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Principal Adviser to the DMRC and Member of the State Planning Board E. Sreedharan will make a presentation of the DPR to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Cabinet colleagues on December 11.
Orders issued
The government on Monday issued orders entrusting the monorail project in the capital to Kerala Monorail Corporation Ltd, a fully owned company being formed under the government.
Kerala Monorail Corporation Ltd, a special purpose vehicle (SPV), will implement the monorail project under the control of the Public Works Department. The Chief Minister is the chairman and Mr. Kunju is the vice-chairman of SPV. Already, the Kozhikode monorail project had been handed over to the SPV by the government.
The MRTS is expected to reduce dependence on personalised modes of transport and reduce traffic movement by 40 per cent. In monorail, the train runs on a narrow guideway beam.