Administration seeks fresh report to solve traffic problems in Chandigarh

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 23

To deal with the problems of urban transport, the UT Administration has decided to get a fresh study conducted on the mobility plan of the city.

Presiding over a meeting on the Mass Rapid Transport System (MRTS), UT Adviser Dharam Pal said the earlier report prepared by Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) in 2009 was outdated, as lots of things have changed on the ground since the study was conducted.

The earlier report of RITES was based on outdated guidelines, he said, adding that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has now totally revised the guidelines for preparing a comprehensive plan for the cities. “The revised study should be prepared in accordance with the current guidelines, needs and new technologies,” he said.

“We will possibly re-engage RITES, as it has already conducted a study, or any other agency with experience to prepare a fresh report to solve the traffic problem of the city,” said the Adviser. During the meeting, options of MRTS such as Metro, monorail, etc, were also discussed.

The UT Administration in 2019 had rejected a detailed study conducted by a French company, Systra, for the city’s mobility plan under the Smart City project.

The mode of transportation to be adopted to resolve the urban transportation problems of the city would be based on the new study to be conducted on MRTS.

Recently, UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore gave his approval to the proposal of the UT on the issue. The RITES had proposed that Metro would cover a distance of 52.4 km, of which 40.4 km will be in Chandigarh and the rest in Mohali. The alignments were proposed both above ground as well as underground. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had prepared the detailed project report of the first phase of the project. Later, in 2017, the Central Government had declared Metro was unviable for the city.