The Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry on Tuesday notified the composition of the E Sreedharan-headed committee, set up to recommend indigenous benchmarks on layout of platforms, size of tunnels and disaster management system of metro rail network in the country. The committee has been asked to submit its report within three months.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had approved the proposal last week, following a meeting at the PMO to review ongoing and upcoming metro projects, one of the officials cited above said. The standards, once finalised by the committee, will be mandatory for all metro projects coming up with Central assistance.
According to notification, other members of the committee are Delhi Metro’s former director for Rolling Stock HS Anand, Executive Director (Carriage) of Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) of Railway for Rolling Stock Sameer lohani, Director, Operations Kochi Metro Rail (for signaling) DK Sinha, Dehradun Metro MD (for civil engineering) Jitendra Tyagi, and Railway Board executive director track modernisation (for Track & Civil Structure) Vipul Kumar.
The other members are Prashanth Rao (Automatic Fare Collection System) Director Systems of Ahmedabad Metro, Anoop Gupta (Traction, Power Supply, Ventilation) Director, Electrical of Delhi Metro, Mukund Kumar Sinha, (Member Secretary) OSD (UT) and Ex Officio Joint Secretary, MoHUA. “After three months, based on specific task of standardisation, Sreedharan could co-opt the relevant expert members for the task for a specified period of time,” the notification said.
According to the Ministry officials, the indigenous standards will ensure that metro rail sub-systems for all new metro projects conform to the prescribed standards, thus incentivising manufacturers to plan for long-term investments in the country and set up manufacturing units.
“There are numerous other areas for which indigenous standards need to be formulated. These are layout of metro station, platforms, signage, displays, size of tunnels, fire protection systems, disaster management systems, environment friendly and waste management systems, standards for solar panels at stations. These indigenous standards will ensure that metro rail sub systems for all new metro projects conform to the prescribed standards thus incentivising manufacturers to plan for long-term investments in the country and set up manufacturing units. This will also bring down the cost of the metro rail constructions and operation,” the statement said.
“There would also be a big scope to push for ‘make in India’ arrangements,” the official added.
“Presently, 490 km of metro lines are operational in ten different cities in the country and more than 600 km of metro rail projects are under construction in various cities. In the coming years, more than 350 km of new construction will be started as more and more cities are planning for expansion or new constructions of metro rail. “In addition to metro rail network, Regional Rapid Transport System is also being introduced to decongest Delhi and the National Capital Region,” it said.