TN, Kerala metros may soon get monorails

Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Thiruvananthapuram and
Kozhikode in Kerala may have a monorail service in the
near future.
The Central Government has received proposals from the
Government of Tamil Nadu for a Chennai City mono rail
project and from Government of Kerala for
Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode in the current year,
stated a reply submitted by Deepa Dasmunshi, minister of
state in the Ministry of Urban Development in the Lok
Sabha.
The report stated that the Government of Tamil Nadu has
decided to implement Phase 1 of the Chennai Monorail
Project of a total length of 57.09 km consisting of three
corridors, namely, Vandalur to Velachery (23 km),
Poonamallee to Kathipara (16 km) and Poonamallee to
Vadapalani (18 km) at an estimated cost of Rs 7,687.03
crore.
This estimated cost excludes escalation, taxes and land
costs. The monorail project would be built under the
Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT)
model and has not sought any funding from the Central
Government.
Similarly, the Government of Kerala proposed to implement
two mono rail corridors on the model of the Delhi Metro Rail
Corporation (DMRC). They are the 22.53 km Technocity to
Karamana corridor in Thiruvananthpuram at a cost of Rs
3,590 crore, and the 14.2 km M C Hostel to Meenchanda
corridor in Kozhikode at a cost of Rs 1,991 crore.
As per the national urban transport policy (NUTP) 2006, the
Central Government supports mass rapid transport systems
(MRTS) projects, including Metro Rail projects, by way of
equity participation, grant and subordinate debt, subject to
a ceiling of 20 per cent of the total capital cost of the
project. The projects are taken up on equity funding or
viability gap funding basis depending the proposal received
from the State government.
The consideration of the proposals and their sanction
depends upon a number of parameters, namely, the project
justification, availability of resources and relative
prioritization.