Chennai off metro track, crosses over to monorail

New Delhi, Mar 24: Chennai has opted out of the Metro Rail juggernaut and is planning on joining the monorail bandwagon.

Even as the Metro Rail projects could start in six mega cities across the country in the fiscal, Chennai would miss the bus, as suddenly, midway, the Tamil Nadu government abandoned the proposal for a Metro and decided to go for the monorail system.

The Tamil Nadu government had decided for the monorail system not realising that it could not meet the needs of such a big city, Delhi Metro Rail Crop Managing Director E Sreedharan said at the conference on ''Alternative Technologies for Public Transport,'' that ended here last evening.

However, we would still try to convince the Tamil Nadu government about the Metro, he added.

DMRC had already carried out investigations and studies for Metro systems in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Cochin and Kolkata, and it was anticipated that at least in four of these cities actual Metro construction would commence in the next financial year.

UNI