Chennai Traffic Forecast
Advantages of Chennai Metro Rail System
Metro Rail System is recognised as a modern, reliable, safe and environment-friendly mode of mass transportation.
Several global cities including Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, London and most recently Dubai have adopted the
Metro Rail System which has served them to remain competitive moving millions of people in and out of the Central
CBD. Chennai Metro Rail once completed will offer following advantages to Chennai: reduce traffi c as it will take
out as many 3000 buses off the roads of Chennai; reduce pollution by as much as
The fare structure
Chennai Metro Rail plans to make it affordable for the common
man to use the Metro for his daily commuting needs. Though the exact
fare structure will be announced closer to the launch date,
the following fare structure has been recommended for
implementation – 30 percent; reduce commuting time by
50-75 percent between destinations; linkage with other forms
of transport like bus, rail and air; can carry over 30,000 passengers
per hour per direction, which is three times more than any other systems.
Employment Generation
Chennai Metro Rail is likely to generate a direct employment
of around 50 skilled people for every kilometre of track,
which translates into a skilled workforce of about 2,255 people.
Indirect employment would be four times as much and would
translate into creating a livelihood for another 9,000 people.
Facilities through property development
Much like the Delhi Metro, Chennai Metro plans to use property development as a means to generate
revenue forits operations. Some of the facilities that would be developed would include completely
air-conditioned underground railway stations, automatic fare collection system, electronic display
and announcement systems, shopping malls, space for parking, provision for
bus feeder services and washroom facilities. This will include creating a leasable space of over 4.3 million
sqft spread over various underground stations on both corridors. Such property development is also likely to
generate employment potential for another 6,000 people directly over the next few years. Apart from property
development at Metro stations and depots, it is possible to raise resources through leasing of
parking rights at stations, advertisements on trains and tickets, advertisements within stations and
parking lots, advertisements on viaducts, columns and other metro structures, cobranding rights to
corporate, fi lm shootings and special events on metro premises. The property development will be
undertaken on joint venture basis though in some cases it may be by outright purchase of the land.
The estimated property development cost including land cost is `1,136 crore. The estimated income to
CMRL from property development is likely to be around `276 crore starting from the year 2014-15.
Environmental impact
Chennai Metro Rail is envisaged to be a green development. Hence though there might be some
short-term environmental impact by way of cutting of trees, CMRL has been mandated to plant
10 trees for every tree cut down. They have already planted more than 5,000 saplings and will
carry out planting of another 10,000 saplings by the end of the year. Once the metro system is
fully operational, one rake of metro system per trip is expected to remove 16 buses/300 cars/600
two wheelers from the road, thereby considerably reducing the traffic congestion in the road
and less carbon emission and contributing to reduction in air pollution.
To sum up, once completed the Chennai Metro Rail will provide the people of Chennai with a fast,
reliable, convenient, effi cient, modern and economical mode of public transport, which when integrated with
other forms of public and private transport will go onto making Chennai a truly global metropolis!
