The New Year might just bring some hope for Chennaiites who are grappling with acute shortage of public transport.
The ambitious Monorail project for the city seems to have crossed a final hurdle in the tendering process with the state government handing over RFP (request for proposal) documents a few days ago to the five identified consortiums. With the consortiums gearing up for the final stage of the tendering process this could mean the construction work could begin as early as at the start of the New Year.
Highly placed sources in the government told DC the RFP document for the Rs8,500 crore-monorail scheme that aims to ease the transportation woes of outlying city suburbs that are not well connected now, had been handed over to the five identified bidders only a few days ago.
“The document, a guideline for the developers in preparing the bid for last stage of bidding, had been finalised after having a series of discussions at the empowered committee meetings,” the sources revealed.
It comprises a number of monorails planned on a particular stretch and specifications to be adhered to in constructing stations and depots, besides facilities to be provided among various other criteria to be fulfilled by the developer while implementing the scheme.
The developers will submit their bids in two months, soon after which the developer will be finalised. In all likelihood, the works for constructing monorail corridors would take off in early 2013, sources noted.
The three proposed corridors under the first phase are Vandalur — Velachery (23 kms), Poonamallee — Vadapalani (18 kms) and Poonamallee to Kathipara junction (16 km). DC had already published the list of proposed stations in its August 9 issue.