'Hyderabad Metro Rail to be slowest in India'

'Hyderabad Metro Rail to be slowest in India'

By B V Shiva Shankar, Times of India, Dec 1, 2012. 

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) that is coming up as a mass rapid transit system to ease the city's traffic congestion would be the slowest in the country thanks to the ill-design of the project, contended petitioners who moved the high court against Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited(HMRL). They charged HMRL with changing the originally designed alignment illegally. 
Talking about the sharp curves of the alignment at eight locations in the stretch between Ameerpet and Jubilee Hills checkpost, the Greenlands Ameerpet Madhuranagar Yousufguda Srikrishna Nagar Joint Action Committee (GAMYS-JAC), which is fighting the legal battle for the traders of the area, argued before the court on Thursday that the defective design would pose a serious threat to passenger safety. While railway safety rules prescribe a minimum 120 metre radius of curvature for alignment of a metro train, the curves designed at the marked locations, including Greenlands, Ameerpet crossroads and Sarathi Studios are less than 60 metres.

"In order to maintain an average speed, the alignment must have wide curves wherever the train bends. As per norms, the radius of curvature must be more than 120 metres. If it is less than that, the speed must be reduced to avoid the risk of the train getting derailed," said professor M N Srihari, advisor to Karnataka government on Bangalore Metro Rail. As per standards, the average operational speed of a metro train is 80 km/hr, but with sharp curves, the average speed of a train has to be reduced to 25 km/hr, the domain experts said. However, the very idea of mass rapid transit system would be defeated with the slower movement, they said.

"Unlike Bangalore Metro, HMRL has still time to rectify the errors as construction work had just started. The radius of curvature can still be increased. If they don't do it, CRS may deny permission or insist on reducing the speed. Going by the calculations, the average operational speed of a Hyderabad Metro train cannot be more than 25 km/hr which means it would be the slowest in the country," said Srihari. 
But, it is not going to be easy for HMRL to rectify the loopholes because increasing the radius of curvature means acquisition of more land and demolition of more buildings. While L&T authorities, concessionaire of HMR project, declined to comment, a spokesperson of HMRL refused to do so because the issue is in court.