Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attended the opening ceremony of the Lucknow metro on September 5. Passenger services were due to start the following day.
Services are operating between 06.00 and 22.00 on an initial 8·4 km ‘priority corridor’ between Transport Nagar and Charbagh, serving eight stations. When complete, the city’s starter line would connect Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport and Munshipulia. Three stations on a 3·4 km section would be underground, with the remaining 19·4 km and 19 stations on an elevated alignment.
The project is being developed as a joint venture between the central government and the state of Uttar Pradesh.
In 2015 Lucknow Metro Rail Corp awarded Alstom a €150m contract to provide rolling stock and signalling. Designed in Bangalore and manufactured at Sri City and Coimbatore, the 20 four-car Metropolis trainsets each have 186 seats arranged longitudinally and two areas for passengers with reduced mobility. Alstom’s factories in Bangalore and Saint-Ouen in France are supplying Urbalis CBTC signalling.
The Chief Minister’s office posted a 2.27-minute video on its official Twitter handle, in which Adityanath is seen saying, “Your wish has finally come true. This metro is yours — this is a gift for your from the central and state governments.”
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always been in favour of a congestion-free, cheaper and eco-friendly public transport system,” he said in the video message.
“We have set a target of March 2019 to complete the second phase of the project,” Adityanath said in the video. Instead of a metro corporation for each of the cities/districts Hqrs where the project has been approved by UP cabinet, Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi on Tuesday said that an umbrella corporation Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation (UPMRC) would be set up to supervise the operational work of metro construction in these districts. The Chief Minister was speaking before flagging off of the first metro rail of Lucknow at Transport Nagar along with home minister Rajnath Singh and governor Ram Naik. Also present on the stage was Metro man, Padm Bhushan and Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation consultant E Sreedharan. The first phase of 8.5 km from Transport Nagar to Charbagh Railway station would be opened for commercial operation from Wednesday 6am onwards.
The chief minister also sought support and guidance from Sreedharan in the UP Metro Rail Corporation. Since the metro man had spoken before the Chief Minister began his address it was still not known whether he would agree to be consultant of UPMRC or not like he had been of Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation.
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dreamt of providing metro transport in 50 cities of the country in the next three years, UP has maximum opportunity to grab, Yogi said and added that metro project has been approved for Kanpur, Jhansi, Agra, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Meerut and Allahabad. While DPR work is complete in some districts, in other it is on and in a few survey work is on.
Once all this metro projects come under UP Metro Rail Corporation, these metro projects could be expedited. He urged the Metro Man Sreedharan to be on board the UP Metro corporation. Lauding his contribution, Yogi said that Sreedharan was the best example for the bureaucracy, which otherwise is known for delaying the projects, that how a project which had a three years deadline can be completed in two years time. Bureaucracy should learn from Sreedharan’s work culture, Yogi stressed.
There will not be a wait for six months, the wait to travel on metro for the people of Lucknow will be over tomorrow as the commercial run to cover 8.5 kilometres would begin, the CM said. “Yeh kewal ek shagoofa nahin hai, yeh ek vaastvikta hai,” the CM concluded.