Monorail not advisable: Sreedharan

Monorail not advisable: Sreedharan

The Hindu

Holds meeting with Chief Minister

# Says system is expensive when compared with metro rail
# Operational cost is 50 per cent more than metro
# Monorail is mainly used in entertainment parks

BANGALORE: E. Sreedharan, an authority on mass rapid transport systems, on Tuesday said monorail was not advisable for Bangalore.

After a meeting with Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, Mr. Sreedharan, managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, told presspersons that he did not favour the system because it was expensive. He said he stood by an interview he had given to a magazine in which he said monorail would cost Rs. 150 crore for one kilometre whereas Delhi's high-capacity metro cost Rs. 110 crore for one kilometre.

In the interview he had said that monorail could carry only 8,000 to 10,000 people an hour whereas the Delhi metro could carry up to 90,000 people an hour.

Mr. Sreedharan, who was also responsible for executing the Konkan railway project, hoped that Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, which has been asked to implement four monorail (mainly along the ring roads) lines, would realise that monorail would not be feasible when they actually received the tenders.

Mr. Sreedharan said the Bangalore metro rail project was progressing well. As an adviser to the metro project, he was holding meetings with the metro rail officials on a regular basis, he added.