Title - Metro Advisory Board set up

A Metro Advisory Board has been set up to formulate plans for expansion and financing of Metro rail projects across the country by the Union Urban Development Ministry. The statutory body to be chaired by the Secretary, Urban Development, will be a platform for exchange of ideas, information, planning, technical and managerial issues related to the Metro systems.“Standardisation and indigenisation have been the focus areas of the Ministry. It is for the first time that an Advisory Board has been formed. It will have on board government officials from various Ministries and undertake reviews, studies and even vet new proposals for a new metro system,” said Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna, who will also chair the body.

Help to standardise
The Advisory Board, Mr. Krishna said, will help in standardisation of various technical aspects, including guidelines for inviting tenders, monitoring procedures and formats.The first meeting of the Metro Advisory Board has been scheduled for June 29 at the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) under the Railway Ministry in Lucknow.“The Board will include A. P. Mishra, member (Engineering), Railway Board; Kul Bhushan, member, (Electricial) Railway Board; V. Ramachandran, Director General of RDSO; Anjuly Chib Duggal from the Finance Ministry, Prem Narain, Principal Advisor, Planning Commission; and S. K. Lohia, Officer on Special Duty (UT) in the Urban Development Ministry, who will be the Member Secretary.

Small panels
“We have also set up small committees for standardisation of various systems. A study is being carried out by a team of consultants on the administration of the metros,” said Mr. Krishna.He said the government has also asked the metro systems to cut their dependence on loans and budgetary allocations and focus on raising resources. “They [metro system] have been advised to generate funds through property development and use spaces at stations and depots. Bangalore and Delhi are already doing it,” said Mr. Krishna.The Government is also keen to formulate a policy on service-level benchmarks for regulating urban transport. “Three institutes have been involved to conduct a study across 12 cities to identify service-level benchmarks on the basis of which future urban transport projects can be planned,” said Mr. Krishna. The study will be conducted in Indore, Delhi, Jammu, Mysore, Patna, Ahmedabad, Surat, Hooghly, Kohima, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Vijayawada and Nanded…Efforts are also on to make cities pedestrian-friendly, we want to encourage pedestrianism, the footpaths should be user-friendly even for the differently-abled. We are thinking of reviving trams and undertaking a study to ascertain the feasibility of using high-tech cycles in some cities,” Mr. Krishna said.