The Capital’s first monorail corridor project will come up in the Trans-Yamuna area with the Delhi Government giving in-principal approval to a link between Shastri Park Metro station and Trilokpuri via Old Iron Bridge. The 10.8-kilometre corridor would be on an elevated single rail with 12 stations on its route — Shastri Park Metro Station, Rajaram Kohli Marg, Geeta Colony, Patparganj Road, Nirman Vihar Metro Station on Vikas Marg, Ganesh Nagar, New Patparganj Road and Sanjay Lake to terminate parallel to the proposed Trilokpuri Metro Station. The total cost is estimated at `1,655 crore and the corridor will be completed by January 2017. A proposal to this effect will be brought before the Cabinet soon. This was decided after a presentation given by RITES on this mode of transport at a high-level meeting, attended by East Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, urban development Minister Ashok Kumar Walia, transport Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely, industries Minister Ramakant Goswami, MLAs Anil Choudhury, Deputy Speaker Ambarish Gautam, Chief Secretary Praveen Kumar Tripathi, principal secretary UD, R Chandaramohan, MD, DSIIDC, Chetan B Sanghi and other officers. The monorail system is in use in Tokyo (Japan) from 1963, Kuala-Lumpur (Malaysia) for the last five years and China for the last three years. In the monorail system, the train runs on a narrow guideway beam with the wheels gripped laterally on either side of the beam. It is a lightweight system and its cost of execution is less as compared to the Delhi Metro lines. The monorail requires a 1.00 m wide space (Column Size 0.8 m X 1.5 m) the space of a footpath or a divider and it rests on a single pillar of height 6.5 m without disturbing the existing traffic. Capacity of four cars monorail system is 8,000 to 12,000 peak hour peak direction (PHPD). Political pandits say monorail corridor project will help east Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit to consolidate his vote bank in trans Yamuna as this is the only corridor which found feasible by RITES while it has rejected two other corridors-Karol Bagh and Chandni Chowk. Dikshit, who was pursuing this project, said that the route of monorail will integrate with three Delhi Metro Lines - Redline, Blueline and the proposed Mukundpur-Yamuna Vihar under construction line. It would also provide provide inter-change facility. After the meeting, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said that the Delhi Government has given in principal approval to this project and a proposal to this effect will be brought before the Cabinet soon. It was also stated that monorail service will attract sufficient ridership and will be able to provide an inter-city transport service in congested localities in trans Yamuna in east Delhi where Delhi Metro and even buses are difficult to ply. It is expected that initially monorail in trans-Yamuna will have daily ridership of around 1.5 lakh. According to the proposal, even DMRC favoured introduction of monorail in such congested area. The proposal further stated that laying of monorail lines is cheaper as compare to Delhi metro lines. As Monorail will be plying above narrow lane in congested locality, straddle type elevated monorail will be able to negotiate sharp curves. The report by RITES is a detailed one, taking into account logistics involved in the project, and it concludes that it is feasible to construct the link. RITES had first proposed monorail corridors as a feasible transport option in its transport development plan prepared in 2005. In 2010, it (RITES) renewed the plan and proposed that a monorail corridor could be constructed between Rohini and Kalyanpuri. That project didn’t really take off. Subsequently, RITES proposed a fresh corridor, from Shastri Park metro station to Trilokpuri this time integrating the corridor with the various lines of the Delhi Metro.