With no progress made over the past few years in the ambitious projects of metro and monorail to end the traffic woes of Chandigarh, the UT Administration has decided to take up the issue of urban rail transit system for the city during a crucial meeting of northern states to be held in the first week of September here.

Besides the urban rail transit system, the Chandigarh Administration will raise the issue of air pollution, construction of ring road, connecting the Chandigarh International Airport through shorter routes with the city among others.

The Chief Ministers of northern states namely Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Rajasthan, NCT of Delhi and Administrator of union territory of Chandigarh will attend the meeting. The issues of common interest including security, transport, water dispute and infrastructure are also likely to be taken up during the meeting.

The previous meeting of inter-state council of northern zone was chaired by the then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in 2017 here.

Manoj Parida, Advisor to UT Administrator said, “For the inter-state council meeting of northern zone here, we have prepared an agenda of issues including urban rail transit system, air pollution, construction of southern ring road, better connectivity of airport with the city.”

“Punjab Governor and UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore will attend the meeting. The agenda will be sent to him for approval. The meeting is scheduled to be held on September 3,” he said.

On metro project, the UT Advisor said, “We are yet to reach a consensus on metro or mono rail projects in Chandigarh. While an SPV was formed for implementation of metro project, nothing could be done from the last three years.”

“Discussions will be held on proposals including metro, monorail and skybus service to alleviate the traffic congestion in the city,” he added.

At present, Chandigarh faces a major challenge due to continuous growth of urban population, private vehicle ownership, congestion and also due to the fragility of public transport here. After one year of its establishment, the city had around 940 vehicles and the number of vehicles is more than 10 lakh now.

In the past, the UT Administration has held discussions on the proposals related to metro project, BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) corridor, monorail and trams to deal with the traffic congestion.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was also signed in 2015 by the Governments of Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh for the formation of Greater Chandigarh Transport Corporation (GCTC) for implementation of tricity metro project. However, due to objections raised by local MP Kirron Kher, the project was scrapped later.

The metro project had proposed to link Chandigarh with satellite townships of Panchkula and Mohali and under this, a total of 37.573 km metro rail project was proposed including 23.468 km elevated and 14.105 km underground in the first phase having two metro corridors namely north-south corridor and east-west corridor.

Notably, a meeting is also scheduled to be held between senior officers of Chandigarh Administration, Governments of Punjab and Haryana this week.  The issues related to construction of southern ring road in the areas of Haryana and Punjab failing in the tricity region, an alternative road for Chandigarh International Airport, tricity metro project among others will be taken up during this meeting.