Monorail on a fast track

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With the government finalising the five developers in the initial stage of the tendering process, the monorail project has been put on the fast track.

The state government has expedited the works for finalising the project developer and will start preliminary discussions this week to formulate criterion to be complied with by the identified bidders during the second and final stage.

Of the three proposed corridors, the first stretch — Vandalur to Velachery (23 km) — will have 14 stations, 12 stations will come up along the Poonamallee - Vadapalani stretch (18 km) and 11 along the third corridor — Poonamallee to Kathipara junction (16 km).

While the proposed three corridors will have a total of 37 stations on paper, in reality it will be 34 as the monorails running between Poonamallee and Kathipara and Poonamallee to Vadapalani stretches will be halting at two common stations (Karayanchavadi and Kumananchavadi besides the source station Poonamallee).

Depots for the monorails would be at Vadapalani and Poonamallee stations where trains can be berthed, serviced and repaired.

The Kathipara station will boast of the multi-modal transport system with the monorail integrating with MRTS, Metro Rail, and EMU service.

The empowered committee headed by the chief secretary and comprising secretaries of various departments, which was appointed for identifying a developer, had on Friday zeroed in on five out of eight firms that had submitted bids for securing the implementation of the scheme. The committee has also finalised the list of stations.

It’s been a year since the announcement of the project and officials have expedited works now to finalise the developer.

The empowered committee will meet again this week and discuss about formulating various criterion that have to be fulfilled by the five consortia of firms during the final stage of the bidding process: Request for Proposal (RFP). '

“The committee will lay a set of rules, including number of monorails to be operated and the operational frequency, besides the ticketing system that should be complied with by the bidders,” a highly places source told this newspaper on Saturday.