Uttar Pradesh has been taking long strides in improving upon its inter-city and intra-city road and transport infrastructure for faster movement of goods and commuters.
While the under-construction Agra-Lucknow Expressway and the proposed Lucknow-Ballia Expressway will provide seamless connectivity across the state, the state government has also been working vigorously on various metro rail projects.
The Lucknow Metro Rail project is already underway and is expected to begin trials by December 2016. The state government had also recently cleared the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for Kanpur Metro Rail.
The DPR for Varanasi Metro Rail is also reported to be under consideration, while the government is keen to launch similar projects in Agra and Meerut as well.
The DPR, once cleared by the state Cabinet, is forwarded to the Centre for vetting. Vetting by central departments could typically take about three months.
The DPR, which was prepared by RITES, had proposed a Metro project for Kanpur spanning 32 km across two corridors and 31 stations, including 19 elevated and 12 underground. According to rates prevailing in August 2015, the project cost is estimated at Rs 13,721 crore.
A meeting of the state Cabinet held on March 14, 2016 had also authorised Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to take decisions with regard to amendments in the Kanpur Metro project in future, since the Centre would come on board in the later stages, as these are joint venture projects and need clearances by central departments and agencies. The Centre also part-finances such projects.
"It is possible for the Kanpur and Varanasi metro projects to start before December 2016, if their DPRs get timely clearances by the concerned central departments and agencies," E Sreedharan, former chairman and managing director of the Delhi Metro, and currently principal advisor to the Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC), had said during his last visit to Lucknow.
Meanwhile, the first phase of the Lucknow Metro project is fast nearing completion and trial runs are projected to start from November after passenger coaches start arriving in September 2016.
With the civil works progressing at a good pace, LMRC is trying to advance the date of the trials from the earlier planned December 2016.
The Lucknow Metro is projected to launch commercial operations by mid-2017. The Akhilesh Yadav government had given its formal nod to the project on June 27, 2013.
The Lucknow and Kochi Metro projects had started around the same time, but the former has taken the lead in terms of meeting timelines. The Lucknow Metro project is also the cheaper of the two projects, as its per-kilometer cost is less than the Kochi metro, primarily owing to the availability of cheaper land.
Currently, an 8.5-km stretch from Lucknow airport to Charbagh railway station under Phase IA of the north-south corridor is being built at a cost of nearly Rs 2,000 crore. The preliminary DPR had proposed two corridors for the Lucknow Metro - north-south and east-west - measuring 23 km and 11 km respectively and costing about Rs 6,880 crore and Rs 5,494 crore.
The north-south corridor comprises 19 elevated and three underground stations. The east-west corridor comprises five elevated and seven underground stations.
