HYDERABAD: With the Hyderabad Metro Rail works picking up pace, VB Gadgil, CEO & MD of L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Ltd, on Tuesday allayed fears of increased traffic problems.In a freewheeling chat with reporters, he asserted that steps would be taken to ensure that inconvenience caused to the public, as a result of the works, would be minimal.“We have submitted a report on traffic in the city to the State government and the traffic police.L&T metro has clear plans for traffic management including measures like curtailing of lanes, allowing one-way traffic and also, communication of construction work at different places in advance to the public,” he explained.Gadgil also confirmed that a major part of the land acquisition related to transit-oriented development (TOD) was completed.“57 acres have been allotted towards TOD at 27 places.70% of it will be used for construction of railway station and the rest for transit development,” he said.Regarding utilities that need to be shifted or altered to make way for the metro, he said, “the government has taken steps regarding utilities over the ground whereas L&T is probing underground utilities like cables, pipelines etc.” On fears that the metro rail would kill other modes of transport like the MMTS, he pointed out that the MMTS had already got the green signal to go ahead with its phase II development.The CEO also denied the possibility of underground railway to avoid unnecessary demolitions at various places.“Since the tender was granted to L&T, it has always been an elevated metro rail and there is no question of an underground rail network,” he clarified and also asserted that there was no proposal to change the route alignment.The L&T metro has invested around `400-500 crore in the project till date.The 1st phase is expected to be completed in 3-5 years.“The project is being watched by the world as this type of project has never been tried.We are also using a very advanced signaling technology which nobody has ever tried,” he said.‘NO COST ESCALATION FOR NOW’Replying to a volley of questions on the cost of the project, Gadgil pointed out, “cost is a dynamic parameter. It will be extremely difficult to predict. All our efforts would be to complete the project within the estimated budget and time span.Besides, we have not used any of the funds from the loans so far. So, the increasing interest rates will not affect us as of now.” He also said the actual expenditure could be assessed only when orders are placed in three to four months.According to the financial closure which was done on March 3, 2011, the project cost estimate stands at Rs 16,375 crore with the Government providing Rs 1,428 crore through the Viability Gap Funding , Rs 11,478 crore through term loans and Rs 3,439 crore through equity.
Comments
0 comment