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Even as the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation was preparing to launch the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), experts were quietly

materialising another mass rapid transit system for the city on the eve of Diwali.

Chief secretary D Rajgopalan was engaged in a hush-hush meeting with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) chief E Sreedharan in Gandhinagar for a metro rail connecting Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar and Thaltej and Kalupur along the east-west axis. Sreedharan also took a field visit of the proposed metro station sites with officers of state government, Indian Railways and DMRC.

A decision was also taken to launch a special purpose vehicle (SPV) — MetroLink Express Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA), which will start official operations by mid-November. MEGA, which will govern metro rail operations, was formed with an initial capital of Rs 10 crore and authorised capital of Rs 200 crore. After the field visit recently, Sreedharan suggested a revalidation study of the DMRC’s study of June 2005. A senior urban development official confirmed that there would be no change in the metro route even after a reassessment of 2005 DMRC report except for few stations.

The 100-km metro route will be totally elevated. The said route has been principally approved by the Union government, according to Gujarat Industrial Development Board (GIDB) sources. Till now the metro project mainly concentrated on the east-west corridor which is Thaltej to Kalupur and the north-south corridor involving APMC market to Gandhinagar.

“Some of the issues that are being addressed is phasing of metro project implementation and instituting feeder transport services. The third phase of BRTS will be bilateral to the metro route,” says a senior official in the urban development department.

Recently, a study for metro rail was assigned to Infrastructure Lease & Financing Services by GIDB, mainly for analysing traffic study. IL&FS would also undertake project advisory services for the Ahmedabad Metro project with the scope of services leading to selection of developer.