Agreement signed to develop Ropeway as a public transport in Uttarakhand

Dehradun, India (Urban Transport News): After scraping the Dehradun Light Metro Rail project, a new plan has now been prepared to improve the public transport system of Dehradun city. The Uttrakhand government now planning to develop the Ropeway system as a public transport in Dehradun. The government has taken the help of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to implement this plan. The government's move to improve the transport system through ropeway is considered to be very important after all the hopes of operating the metro in Dehradun are over. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between Urban Development Minister Madan Kaushik for Uttrakhand Metro Rail Corporation (UkMRC) and S.D. Sharma, Director (Business Development) of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on Monday. The DMRC was entrusted with the task of making a detailed project report (DPR) for the construction of ropeway in Dehradun. Under the agreement between Delhi Metro and top officials of the Uttarakhand government, DPR will be ready within the next four to six months. After this, the transport system will be started through ropeway in about 2 years. Uttarakhand's Urban Development Minister Madan Kaushik said that the number of tourists in Dehradun is constantly increasing and the pressure of the population is also increasing continuously. In such a situation, the government has taken this important step to better the public transport system in the city. The completion of this project will take two and a half years. This project will be completed at a much lower cost than the metro rail system. This project will cost around Rs 2,000 crore only. Initially, two routes will be developed under the ropeway project. There will be pods/cars with 10-12 passengers capacity run on the ropeway. The first route will be developed up to Respna via Ghantaghar from FRI and the second route will be made from ISBT to Rajpur Road. It is considered a milestone for the purpose of improving the transport system of Dehradun. The Uttarakhand government claims that till now the ropeway system is not being used for public transport in any other place and city of the country. In such a situation, Doon city will be the first city in the country to have a ropeway system as public transport. After signing the MoU the Uttarakhand government has also issued the first installment of Rs 43 lakh to DMRC for making the DPR. It is pertinent to mention here that the Uttarakhand Government has spent over Rs 5,000 crore in conducting feasibility and finalising detailed project reports of Dehradun Light Metro Rail.

Highlights of the Ropeway Project

• Ropeway will run between 20 to 25 km.
• Rs 2000-2200 crores will be spent on the ropeway project.
• The DPR of the ropeway project will be ready in 6 months.
• The project has to be prepared between 2 years after the tender.
• Initially, two routes will be constructed under the Ropeway project.
• The first route will be made from FRI to Respna via Ghantaghar
• The second will go from ISBT to Rajpur Road (Kandoli).
• The transport capacity of a ropeway will be about 10-12 passengers.