Delhi to have monorail by 2017: Sheila

Monorail to run along 11-km Shastri Park-Trilokpuri stretch; Rs 2,200 crore project will be funded by JICA

In an attempt to push the growth of infrastructure in Delhi, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has reiterated her commitment to make sure the city has its monorail by 2017.

The Indo-Japan Monorail seminar was conducted on Tuesday to discuss the likely prospects of monorail in Delhi. The session was attended by Dikshit, Union Minster of Urban Development Kamal Nath and officials of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japanese companies.

The monorail is expected to run by 2017 along the 11 km stretch between Shastri Park and Trilokpuri, a Rs 2,200 crore project that would be funded by JICA. The JICA officials hinted the cost of the project was likely to escalate.

Nath and Dikshit asserted monorail was a feasible option for India because of narrow roads and busy streets, where it was very difficult for the metro to reach. The monorail between Shastri park and Trilokpuri would serve highly congested areas such as Geeta Colony, Gandhi Nagar and Laxmi Nagar.

Various officials of JICA emphasised that the monorail was cost effective because of the low cost of setting it up and because it had been a success story in Tokyo, Japan.

However, some officials from the Mumbai metro present at the seminar raised questions over the fading popularity of monorail around the world.