New Delhi: Nearly 12 years since its conception, the Jaipur Metro’s phase-2 project is back on track with the Rajasthan government seeking the Centre’s support to expand the metro network in the Pink City.
The Jaipur Metro Rail Corporation (JMRC), a state-owned company, will soon start work to revise the alignment of the long-delayed phase-2 in the detailed project report (DPR) for the second time. It was first revised in 2020, but the plan did not materialise.
The delay in the expansion of the metro network in Jaipur, state government officials admit, impacted its daily ridership, which for a long time remained in the range of 19,000 to 25,000 passengers. But in the past few years, the daily ridership has increased to 55,000 passengers.
Jaipur was among the first few cities in India to get a metro network; operations started in 2015. But the pace of metro expansion in the Pink City is far behind several cities, including Ahmedabad and Kochi, where operations started long after Jaipur. For instance, Ahmedabad, where metro operations started in 2019, has close to 40 kilometres of operational network today, while Lucknow (operational since 2017) has had 22 kilometres of operational network since 2019.
Currently Jaipur has just 12 kilometres of operational metro network between Mansarovar and Badi Chaupar (Phase-1) to provide east-west connectivity. Of this, a stretch of 2.4 kilometres was made operational in 2020.
The proposed phase-2, which will be around 26 to 30 kilometres, will provide the much-needed north-south connectivity between Sitapura and Jaipur International Airport, covering a much larger area of the city as it will pass through residential, commercial and industrial areas in Vidyanagar.
Vaibhav Galriya, principal secretary of the Rajasthan government’s urban development and housing department, told ThePrint that the state government is in the process of finalising the joint venture with the Centre.
“The metro expansion work has picked up pace. We will be doing a joint venture with the Centre for further expansion of the Jaipur Metro. The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has recently sought some response from the state government regarding the joint venture,” said Galriya, who is also the chairman and managing director of JMRC.
ThePrint has reached the housing and urban affairs ministry for comment. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
Meanwhile, the JMRC is in the process of awarding the work to revise the DPR to RITES, a public sector enterprise under the Ministry of Railways.
“The DPR was prepared long back. It has to be revised as some road infrastructure projects have come up on the proposed alignment and government’s plan to extend phase-2 till the airport. We are in the process of issuing work orders to RITES. The revised DPR should be ready in the next three-four months,” said Galriya.
With Jaipur Metro phase-2 hanging fire for over a decade, city authorities have planned new road infrastructure upgradation projects along the proposed alignment to decongest the city. For instance, the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has developed road infrastructure projects to make some intersections on the Tonk Road signal free.
“Some of the main reasons for revising the DPR are the new road infrastructure projects that have come up along the proposed alignment. As the proposed corridor to Ambabari is elevated, the alignment may have to be changed to factor in the new road infrastructure,” a JMRC official, who asked not to be named, told ThePrint.
With metro expansion back on the drawing board, urban planning and transport experts say there is a need to simultaneously plan for land use development of areas around the proposed alignment to have high density development, which will be critical for ensuring efficient use of the mass transit system.
Jagan Shah, chief executive officer of Infravision Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank, told ThePrint that there is a need to simultaneously plan for the development of areas around the proposed corridors.
“Area-based development planning on the principles of transit-oriented development (TOD) is essential so that commercial or other planned developments come up while the metro corridor is planned. If land use development is not synchronised along with metro development, then the time gap between the two things creates a problem,” said Shah, former director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs, a New Delhi-based organisation under the central government.
He added that if land use development based on TOD is initiated early on, it can help in efficient use of the metro system once ready. “When it comes to growth in ridership, it can either be through captive ridership or by generating demand by ensuring planned development around stations.”
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Ridership ‘expected to touch 1.7 lakh’ with phase-2
Galriya said that till 2019, the ridership was around 19,000. “But Jaipur Metro’s ridership is one of the best (in the country) given the present length of the operational network. Once phase-2 is operational, our daily ridership is expected to be around 1.7 lakh.”
According to JMRC officials, one of the reasons for the increase in ridership was the opening of the 2.4 kilometre-long stretch in 2020 to Badi Chaupar, which is a busy old town area.
“The ridership of phase-1 would have been over 1 to 1.5 lakh had phase-2 been constructed in accordance with the initial plan,” another JMRC official told ThePrint.
With the Centre supporting metro expansion in cities, urban transport and planning experts say that a minimum of two crisscrossing corridors are ideal for optimal utilisation of the metro network.
Mangu Singh, former managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), told ThePrint that one can talk about ridership only when there is a good metro network in place. “The ridership will increase as the network expands. As metros are capital-intensive projects, it is not possible to simultaneously plan multiple corridors. However, having two crisscrossing corridors is ideal to provide metro connectivity to large parts of the city.”
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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