Route changes delayed Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar metro

Ahmedabad: A metro service between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar was proposed in 2003, just two years after the first metro rail rolled out in Delhi. The Delhi Metro Rail Corridor (DMRC) was invited to prepare a Rs 4,305 crore plan for Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar metro service. After 19 years, the project is still at the starting block. Cities like Mumbai, Kochi, Bangalore and Jaipur have already availed the central government funding and are far ahead. After scrapping routes three times, the state government has gone back to its 2005 plan.
The DMRC in 2005 had warned the state government that the cost of the metro rail would escalate at the rate of Rs 40 lakh per day in case of any delay. Its prophecy came true in 2014 when metro committee chief Nitin Patel announced the fourth alignment — nearly like the 2005 route plan at a cost of Rs 9,000 crore.
The metro rail story started in 2003 when during the first Vibrant business summit the government announced a Rs 400- crore plan for Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar metro. The report was prepared by V D Gupta, a retired general manager of western railway. Then in June 2004, just ahead of the 2005 Vibrant summit, DMRC managing director E Sreedharan dished out a 42-km and Rs 3,500 crore metro plan. After the summit was over, the focus shifted to developing a world-class BRTS system. But even today, the bus network has failed to grow beyond 1.6 lakh ridership per day, despite bloating from 45km to nearly 100km network. When it was time for the 2009 Vibrant summit, the focus turned to Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) and with the Japanese government offering Rs 130 crore for the Gujarat portion of the DMIC corridor, the state government announced linking Dholera by metro rail the following year.
In September 2012, just before the December assembly elections and Vibrant summit in January 2013, the state government scrapped the 2005 DMRC metro rail proposal to come up with a revamped Rs 20,000 crore, 76km long circular metro rail route plan, that connected GIFT city to Ahmedabad, the airport and Kalupur railway station. However, the airport link has been dropped in the recent plan. Even in the city, alignment kept on changing. Earlier it was to pass through Ashram Road, then it was to run parallel to the 132 Feet Ring Road and finally in 2014, the railway agreed to permit construction parallel to its track passing from the city.