Experts discuss metro rail at Infra-Nirbhar webinar
Metro-leaders
and analysts shared their experiences of building metro rail in various Indian
cities on Monday at “Metro Vision”, a webinar under the Infra-Nirbhar webinar series organised by CW and Swarajya magazines.
The primacy
accorded to metro rail in the current Union Budget was not lost on the panel,
as Nalin Gupta of J Kumar Infraprojects spotlighted—Gupta estimated that the
next 15 years will witness “huge order books and execution” in the metro rail
segment of urban infrastructure.
Sharing success
stories and learning experiences in the initial phases of building metro rail
in Mumbai and Chennai, Abhay Mishra, CEO and MD of Mumbai Metro One, reflected
on the initial uncertainties that surrounded ridership. Would the Mumbaikar,
accustomed to the efficiency of local trains, adopt metro rail? Mishra pointed
out that happily, the growth is now “in double digits”, and that Mumbai Metro’s
ridership has evolved so well that one of the metro reaches now figures as the
seventh most patronised in the world.
Speakers
were:
Abhay Mishra, CEO & MD, Mumbai Metro One
Nalin J
Gupta, MD, J Kumar Infraprojects
Pradeep
Yadav IAS, Managing Director, Chennai Metro Rail
Surjit
Madan, Head-Rail Systems, Amaravati Metro Rail
Aashish
Chandorkar, Columnist and Writer, and Pratap Padode, Editor-in-Chief,
Construction World, moderated the session.
