Can Monorail solve city’s traffic woes?
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While Kochi is singing tunes for Metro Rail, why shouldn’t the capital city think of a Monorail as a starter? If not the State Government, a senior citizen of the city has not just thought about it, but worked out a project report on ‘Monorail for Thiruvananthapuram’, which has got a warm response from the city’s MP himself.Brigadier C.G. Verghese, VSM (retired) prepared the paper ‘Augmenting Transport Infrastructure, Monorail for Thiruvananthapuram’, which caught the attention of Trivandrum bloggers’ group last week. The group forwarded it to Shashi Tharoor MP and one of the bloggers tweeted to him about the post.Tharoor, the other day, tweeted in reply to say that it is an “excellent paper, well-researched and argued.’’ He added that it, however, requires State Government action.“MP can’t initiate. Am willing to support a proposal by State Govt to Centre on a monorail system for Tvm,’’ Tharoor’s tweet to a blogger says.Meanwhile, Brigadier Verghese, who is in Mumbai presently, is a happy man that his project has been receiving its due attention. He had a few months ago submitted the project to Law Minister M. Vijayakumar and former Road and PWD Minister Mons Joseph. But the idea did not move an inch.Verghese is a resident of the city for the last two decades and more, before he retired from the Army’s Intelligence Wing. He was heading the Army’s Intelligence School in Pune when he retired. And since then has been staying at Ulloor Prashanth Nagar in the city.His proposal is for construction of a Monorail system over the various rivers and canals, without hindering the existing roadways, railways and inland waterways and surrounding areas of Thiruvananthapuram city. “The basic concept of the project is construction of support structures of the system on Government land thereby obviating the need to evict landowners, which in turn, would reduce litigation, thereby reducing cost of the project,’’ he says.The project states: “Each river and ‘thodu’ in the city limits has 8 to 10 ft of Government land on either side. These strips of Government-owned land could be used for construction of concrete pillars and slabs and no one will have to be evicted and no compensation will have to be paid. These link roads constructed over the water sources would reduce the traffic congestion on existing main roads. On the Government land freely available astride the Karamana river, Killi river, Parvathi Puthanar and other canals in the North of Trivandrum city which are not utilized could be economically utilized for establishing a ‘Circular Monorail System’ around Greater Trivandrum.’’It goes on to say: “One set of Monorail cars could be run clockwise and another set of Monorail cars could be run anti-clockwise without disrupting our existing road, rail and inland water transport systems.’’Verghese has even created diagrams and maps to go with his proposal. “Our development projects related to road-widening end up nowhere because land acquisition poses a major hurdle. There are only seminars and discussions that happen,’’ he told Expresso from Mumbai.Interestingly, Verghese had written five ‘red books’ (which are confidential and restricted to use in Army and not for public reading) and also penned two other books which have been brought out by Vikas Publishers, New Delhi.Whatever its future, the Monorail proposal has currently become the topic of hot discussion among city bloggers.
trivandrum@epmltd.com
Courtesy : Expressbuzz.com
