Rs.4,000 crore 'Metrino' project to start in four months: Gadkari

The government will commence work on the 'Metrino' project, on the pattern of a ropeway, in four months to decongest roads in the national capital, union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said on Friday.

The project, estimated to cost around Rs.4,000 crore, will cover a 70 km stretch from Dhaula Kuan in Delhi to Manesar near Gurgaon in Haryana.

Gadkari said Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government was taking a number of initiatives to bring in new technology in the transport sector, in the light of a rising number of vehicles in Delhi.

He, therefore, said his ministry was working on the ambitious project of Metrino to decongest traffic on the National Highway-8 (NH-8) that currently has the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway.

"We are going to start construction work on the Metrino project in next four months," Gadkari said here during his interaction with the media at the Indian Women's Press Corps (IWPC) on Thursday night.

He claimed that fare in the Metrino system would be even cheaper than the Delhi Metro.

In the Metrino system, fully automated and driverless small vehicles -- known as pods -- will travel suspended under an overhead network. It will come down at the station.

Each pod, carrying up to five people, would run at a speed of up to 50 km per hour.

The minister said the project, powered on electricity, does not require land as pillars would be built in between the roads.

Gadkari earlier said the cost of the project would be Rs.50 crore for a kilometre as compared to Rs.250 crore per km for a metro rail project.

He informed that nearly five lakh road accidents occur anually in India, saying his ministry was trying to ensure that the accident rate reduces by 50 percent over the next two years.