The Hubli-Dharwad administration was given a glimpse of how monorail could rovolutionise commuting in Hubli-Dharwad. A preliminary meeting in connection with the proposed monorail project for Hubli-Dharwad was held at the deputy commissioner’s office here.
Deputy Commissioner Sameer Shukla, Hubli-Dharwad Urban Development Authority chairman Lingaraj Patil, officials of the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation, Engineering Projects India (EPI) Limited and the Malaysian company Scomi participated in the meeting.
The EPI and Scomi officials made a presentation on monorail. They said, the project would require an investment of Rs 150 crore per km. They added that it would be ideal to take up such projects as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.
When Shukla sought details on any such project being taken up by them as a PPP project, they replied in the negative. They added that they had submitted a proposal to the Rajasthan government.
Later, Shukla told reporters that the EPI and Scomi have proposed to take up the monorail project for Hubli-Dharwad as a PPP model. They have been provided the traffic study report conducted by the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) in 2009 and was told to identify routes for the proposed project to make it viable and submit a feasibility report on taking up the monorail project on a PPP model.
They have asked to prepare an approximate route map for the city within 15 days. The route map would be discussed at length later. Meanwhile, the officials too would conduct a traffic study on their own. The formal proposal would be submitted after getting approval for the route map, he said.
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The next meeting in this connection would be held on September 22. Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar is expected to visit the city on that day, he said. Lingaraj Patil added that the EPI and Scomi officials visited various places in the city and received basic information the alignment of route between Hosur circle to Airport in Hubli and from Jubilee circle to Karnataka University and University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) Dharwad.
Patil said it was the right time to invest on such mega projects in Hubli-Dharwad keeping in mind the increasing traffic flow and future development. The Metro rail was introduced lately in Bangalore and such delay should not happen in case of Hubli-Dharwad, he said.
He claimed that the proposed project was at the stage of preliminary discussion and it had not been finalised by the government.