Canada's LEA is traffic consultant for metro

LEA Associates South Asia, a Canadian consultancy firm, has been selected as the traffic consultant by Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) for designing junction improvements for the three metro rail corridors.

Of the eight national and international consultancy firms, which responded to the Request for Proposal (RfP) notification, four got technically qualified. LEA Associates submitted the lowest bid of Rs 62.79 lakh, while the bids of STUP Consultants was Rs 69.17 lakh, Egis India (Rs 83.01 lakh) and RITES (Rs 133.44 lakh).

With the highest technical score and lowest financial quote, LEA was selected by a three-member committee consisting of finance secretary T Satyanarayana Rao, HMR Rail managing director NVS Reddy and Hyderabad Metro Water Board managing director M Jagadeeshwar, with the approval of HMR chairman CVSK Sarma, according to a release.

As the traffic consultants, LEA Associates will have to study traffic volume counts and suggest immediate improvements for about 110 intersections on the three metro rail corridors within two months. They have to design and submit junction improvement plans for all the intersections for both present and future traffic needs. They will also have to assess the need for grade separators (flyovers/underpasses) for the intersections of corridor I (Miyapur-LB Nagar) and integrate the flyover alignments with the metro rail alignment within six months. The firm will deploy a team of six traffic experts for six months for this purpose.

Intersection improvements are crucial for traffic management during metro rail construction, since junctions tend to become traffic bottlenecks during peak hours, NVS Reddy, stated.