Work on Delhi's monorail project to start next month

Delhi would boast of north India's first monorail network by 2017 with the city Government on Wednesday fast tracking work on a 11-km corridor in east Delhi that would be integrated with three different lines of the existing Metro network.

The first monorail corridor from Shastri Park Metro Station to Trilokpuri will have 12 stations and the Detailed Project Report has been reviewed and approved by the Delhi Metro which would implement the project.

Work on the project would start in the next couple of months and the corridor would be commissioned in 2017 at a cost of Rs2,235 crore.

Delhi Government took to the route of monorail, which is not a successful mode of transport like the Metro, to take public transport to door steps of people in congested colonies where mass rapid transport like Metro cannot be constructed.

Taking a round of the route-alignment of the corridor, Transport Minister Ramakant Goswami Goswami said the corridor would cater to around 1.5 lakh passengers a day initially.

East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit said the corridor will have three inter-change points at Shastri Park, Nirman Vihar and Trilokpuri thereby providing connectivity with the existing Dilshad Garden-Rithala line, Anand Vihar-Dwarka and the proposed Mukundpur-Yamuna Vihar under Phase-III of Metro.

Goswami also asked DMRC chief Mangu Singh, who was present, to make the corridor more purposeful and useful.

"It is more easy and cheap to lay Monorail lines than Metro lines. The Monorail can take sharp curves. It can also run in densely populated localities as it takes lesser area to operate," Dikshit said.

The 12 stations on the line are Shastri Park, Kailash Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, Taj Enclave, Geeta Colony, Guru Angad Nagar, Scope Tower, Ganesh Nagar, Mother Dairy, Patparganj, Kotla and Trilokpuri.

The corridor would start from Shastri Park Metro Station and culminate at Trilokpuri via Yamuna Pusta Road, Raja Ram Kohli Marg, Geeta Colony, Patparganj Road, Vikas Marg, Ganesh Nagar, New Patparganj Road, NH-24, Sanjay Lake and proposed Trilokpuri Metro Station.

Dikshit expressed hope that the Monorail corridor would bring a sea-change in public transport scenario in the East Delhi.