The state government in Gujarat has planned to build mass rapid transit systems (MRTS) in 4 cities of Gujarat including Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar which is expected to get ready by end of this year and SYSTRA has been awarded the contract for preparing a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the mega project. According to the official sources, the feasibility studies are being conducted for the construction of either Metro Neo or Metro Lite projects in these four cities which will be cheaper in comparison to the conventional metro-rail projects. SYSTRA will identify the feasible corridors for operating the metros and will conduct a traffic demand analysis and identify growth centres in each of these cities along with preparing the DPR. The plan to run Metro Neo and Metro Lite in these cities is being implemented because these types of metros will fit in medium or small cities and therefore are more efficient. Whereas conventional metros have high capacities and incur huge costs because of which they are not feasible for small cities. The Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation GMRC has been entrusted with implementing these projects. GMRC in turn said that these new projects will have metros with two or three coaches instead of six in the case of Ahmedabad Metro. So when the length of the train reduces as well as the width of stations reduces the costs of the entire project comes down as a result. Therefore, the Metro Lite will cost approximately ₹150 crore in comparison to ₹300 crore, which was spent on building one km of phase-1 of Ahmedabad metro. Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) is in fact an equal joint venture between the Gujarat government and the Government of India and is already implementing the metro projects in Ahmedabad and Surat.
