Metro set to transform Hyderabad

HMR, the flagship infrastructure venture of the Telangana government, promises to make travel a pleasant experience.

Sometimes, your only available transportation is a leap of faith. Yet one would like to give one more try to the intermittent RTC buses knowing full well the risks involved. After what seems an eternity and a nail biting suspense, it finally swims into view. But all hopes of making it to your destination in time are dashed as only the bravehearts manage to cling on to the overcrowded bus.

Those who commute by public transport will agree that waiting for a bus is the worst kind of experience, especially in urban areas when you are in a tearing hurry. It’s like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Hopefully, all this will change for the good. The Metro rail getting ready to roll out this month-end promises to take urban transportation to a new level. Hyderabadis will be able to reach their destinations in time without fuming and fretting. And most importantly, the hassles of travelling in buses packed like sardines will be a thing of the past.

Determined leadership

The Charminar Pedestrianisation Project and the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) conceived in the undivided State are intended to address the problem of burgeoning traffic as the two projects were hanging fire for years. But after the TRS government assumed office things started looking up for them. The managements and the leadership are doing things in the right thing. This is clear from the way a determined TRS government has pushed through the project in the last three years despite several hiccups and hurdles.

Touted as the world’s largest Metro Rail Project in PPP mode, the flagship infrastructure venture of the Telangana government promises to make travel a pleasant experience. There are about 200 urban Mass Rapid Transit  systems across the world but most of them are capital intensive and built by government utilising the taxpayers’ money. However, HMR chose not to follow the rut but break new ground. Experts think Hyderabad Metro will be a game changer in the way Railways design infrastructure projects in future. For the first time, Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) technology has been introduced in the HMR. What it means is that the technology makes it possible to run the trains with a headway of 90 seconds during peak hours besides providing critical safety features like collision avoidance and overspeed protection. The CBTC ensures highest level of monitoring, controlling and command. Other safety aspects like automatic train supervision, automatic train control and automatic train operation are built into the system. The Hyderabad Metro also boasts of advanced braking system in the rolling stock, enabling 35 per cent power regeneration which feeds backs into the system. All this helps reduce the carbon footprint.

Best betMetro rail system is considered the best bet to mitigate air and sound pollution, decongest traffic, overcome commute delays apart from being energy efficient, while catering to a very high peak hour per direction passenger traffic. Realising these benefits, many European and Asian cities went for this model as early as the 1980s.

Though ambitious in scope the project, however, has not been swift in execution. Right from the word go it has faced many challenges, mostly non-engineering. It is mainly land acquisition blues that delayed the project. Handling different interest groups, tackling sensitive structures, environmental issues, political interference and convincing people to part with their properties is nothing short of a Herculean task. So far the HMR authorities have acquired about 2,500 properties across the three traffic-dense corridors but not before winning protracted legal battles. Several rounds of negotiations, appeals and persuasions have gone in to get the ‘Right of way’ for the development of the project. Sultan Bazar proved to be a tougher nut to crack with the traders refusing to hand over their properties. In fact, the HMR managing director, NVS Reddy, had to face the ire of the traders, suffer gharaos, agitations and demonstrations.

Exemplary achievement

Elevated metro systems are difficult to execute, especially in areas which are already dense and built up. But HMRL has pulled off a near impossible feat accomplishing a complex project through the highly congested roads of Hyderabad. No wonder it  bagged the Global Engineering Project of the year award in 2013 by the sixth Global Infrastructure Leadership Forum in New York.

Far from being a simple mass transit facility, the Hyderabad Metro is an effort to redesign, rejuvenate and transform the nawabi shahr into a friendly green city. The first phase of the Rs 14,132-crore project, stretched across 29 km, is scheduled to be commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month-end.


A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it’s where the rich ride public transport. One hopes these words of Petro Gustavo, former Mayor of Bogota, Colombia, come true in Hyderabad.

J.S.Ifthekhar,

Hyderabad based journalist.

Article published in Telangana Today

Dated November 16,2017