Delhi Will Soon Be Able To Travel In Driver-less Pods 5-10 Meters Above Road Traffic!

With the Make In India campaign gloriously underway with the bullet trains and phones with panic buttons, the country is hurtling towards urbanization with no holds barred.

The latest to be added in the list of India’s impressive urban projects are the ‘Metrino’ driver-less pods which will carry passengers along Delhi’s skyline, with the project costing an ambitious Rs 4,000 crore.

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Union Minister Nitin Gadkari green-lighted the project recently and work for the same will begin in about two months. Explaining the project, Gadkari said that the Metrino is like a rope-way system, which runs on electricity and consists of driver-less pods which will transport passengers at a height of 5 to 10 meters above normal traffic.

The pods will run at an average speed of 50 km/hr and will run between designated stations which will be elevated so as to not interfere with the traffic on the highways.

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Each pod will have a five-passenger capacity, and they will be air-conditioned with optional multimedia capabilities. They will have an average carrying capacity of 6,000 passengers per direction per hour as opposed to 3,000 for buses and tramways. Ticket costs are expected to match those of other public transport services because of low energy requirements.

The first phase of the project is slated to be set down between Dhaula Kuan in Delhi to Manesar in Haryana, a stretch of 70 km, to ease the traffic congestion problems in the National Capital Region (NCR).

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As part of the massive reformation going on for changing the highways sector, the Metrino project is one among many other projects to help solve the problem of traffic in the NCR area. The first phase will allow the Government to visualize if the solution is worth expansion. Currently, the capital cost of Metrino stands at 50 crore/km as opposed to the Rs 250 crore/km cost of laying down the Metro lines.

This project has several highlights and problem-solving capabilities, if done right.