Wait for Metro gets longer, Chandigarh Admn seeks revised report

The wait for the tricity Metro continues to extend further with UT officials asking the consultant, RITES, to revise its scenario analysis report (SAR) for further deliberations. A meeting of the stakeholders to decide the fate of the project was held here today.

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The officials from the engineering, urban planning and transport departments of UT, and consultant RITES Ltd, formerly known as Rail India Technical and Economic Service Limited, today discussed the SAR submitted during the two meetings of the joint committee of senior officials from Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana held here in February and January.

At the today’s meeting, RITES presented key elements of the report, including transport demand assessment, traffic analysis zones and highway network, development and validation of the base year travel demand model, projections of future travel demand and train operation plan. It also shed light on other key aspects such as power supply system, geometric design parameters, MRTS corridor characteristics, capital cost estimates, means of finance, and the assessment of operational and economic viability.

Calculations of the financial internal rate of return (FIRR) and economic internal rate of return (EIRR), along with an analysis of the economic costs and benefits of the proposed Metro project, were also shared during the meeting.

“However, it was observed that RITES had not incorporated several critical points raised by the committee members during the previous two meetings,” a senior official told The Tribune.

These included the lack of explanation regarding the methodology used to extrapolate daily ridership on the basis of “passenger per hour per direction”, absence of a comparison between actual and projected ridership figures as per the CAG report, missing data on the operational ratio and the reliability of software modelling projections.

Additionally, no conversion factor indicating how many people are expected to board the metro was provided, the justification for the 3% annual traffic growth rate was not explained, inconsistencies in the economic analysis figures, especially in the scenario summaries, were not addressed, and the impact of isolated corridors on the overall economic internal rate of return of the network was not clarified.

“Accordingly, RITES was directed to revise the report and incorporate all actionable points raised by the committee in the last two meetings,” the official added.

The Chandigarh metro project hs been planned for the tricity region comprising Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula.

A high-level committee of senior officials from Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana was constituted by Punjab Governor-cum-Chandigarh Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria in November 2024.

The joint committee of all stakeholders was constituted to study the feasibility of the metro project thoroughly from all the aspects, including the CAG reports on other metro projects in the country.

The panel, which is an extension of the Chandigarh Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA), a body established to oversee and improve the transportation system in the tricity region with the aim of ensuring an effective public transport, coordinating with various transportation agencies, and promoting key transportation projects, had held two meetings here in February and January.