INDIA: Construction of the two-line Agra Metro network was formally launched with a ceremony on December 7 attended by the Governor of Uttar Pradesh Anandiben Patel and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, plus the national Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri.
Attending via video conferencing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a foundation plaque and pressed a button to start the first piling rig for the project.
The two line network is being developed by Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corp within a budget of Rs80bn. The 14 km Line 1 will run from Taj East Gate to Sikandara, with elevated sections and tunnels under the city centre. The 15·4 km Line 2 from Agra Cantt to KalindiVihar will be elevated throughout.
Modi said ‘a world class metro in Agra will not just ease travelling for locals and tourists, but will also help boost the economic sector of this heritage city’, adding that it was ‘extremely important to empower small cities’.
He noted that India had built around 450 km of metro in the past six years, and was on course to have 1 000 route-km in service by 2022. It was also ‘a matter of immense pride’ that the trains were being manufactured locally.
Explaining that UPMRC had successfully delivered the first metro line in Lucknow and was building the Kanpur metro, Managing Director Kumar Keshav said building a metro through the historic centre of Agra was ‘very ambitious’. However, UPMRC was ‘determined to execute this project with all our might’.
- Read more about the Agra Metro project in our interview with Kumar Keshav in the Autumn 2020 issue of Metro Report International magazine.
