The list of global consortiums in the fray and eligible to participate in the bidding process for developing the city's monorail network will be announced next week.
Speaking on the sidelines of a review of monorail and metro rail projects undertaken by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa here on Saturday, a senior official of the State government said that three consortiums are likely to be shortlisted.
Technical criteria
The criteria fixed for demonstrating technical capacity to qualify for the project were – the consortium should have been awarded an urban rail project on DBFOT (Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer) basis with a minimum route length of 37 km within the last three fiscal and a shareholder net worth of Rs.500 crore.
The official said that since “experience in an urban rail project is sufficient,” the consortiums need not be necessarily operating an existing monorail system.
Financial bidding
The ‘qualified' applicants would enter a round of financial bidding.
A two month period would be given to prepare a Detailed Project Report on the implementation of a monorail system along four elevated corridors, totalling 111-km, which has already been identified by the government.
The entity that quotes the lowest user fare structure and expects the least amount of concessions from the State government is expected to be nominated as the ‘monorail operator'.
The Request For Quotation (RFQ) floated by the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, which is the nodal agency for the implementation of the Chennai Monorail project, says that a comparatively short time span would be provided for submission of the bids.
Monorail cell
A monorail cell has also started functioning from within the MTC's headquarters on Anna Salai.
The monorail system is proposed to constitute a network of four elevated corridors – Vandalur to Puzhal via Avadi (54 km); Vandalur to Velachery via Tambaram East (23 km); Poonamallee to Kathipara via Porur (18 km); and Poonamallee to Vadapalani via Valasarawakkam (16 km).
