L&T Metro Rail (Hyderabad) Limited, the concessionaire for the city’s metro rail project, is planning to operationalise the first stretch between Nagole and Mettuguda, out of the 71.16-kilometre, three-corridor project, within three to three-and-a-half years.
Speaking to mediapersons here on Tuesday, VB Gadgil, chief executive officer and managing director of L&T Metro, said the company had decided to execute the project in phases to partly operationalise the project even though the company had a mandate to complete it in five years.
Stating that the project would be as advanced and modern as any such project anywhere in the world, Gadgil said that they will be finalising the vendors for all the systems, including the metro cars, in the next three months.
“The project poses both technical and execution challenges in addition to narrow lanes and undue terrains. All the experience gathered by L&T over a period will be tested here,” he said, while exuding confidence that they will be putting all their might to make the project a model that could trigger the demand for more such facilities in other parts of the country.
Though the standard gauge is being built to suite a maximum speed of 80 kilometre per hour, the metro rails are expected to travel at an average speed of 38-40 kilometre per hour. This is because the average distance between any two stations is about one kilometre, while half of the total length of the metro rail lines comes in curves, according to him.
