Metro-leaders and analysts shared their experiences of building metro rail in various Indian cities on Monday at “Metro Vision”, a webinar under the Infra-Nirbhar webinar series organised by CW and Swarajya magazines.

The primacy accorded to metro rail in the current Union Budget was not lost on the panel, as Nalin Gupta of J Kumar Infraprojects spotlighted—Gupta estimated that the next 15 years will witness “huge order books and execution” in the metro rail segment of urban infrastructure.

Sharing success stories and learning experiences in the initial phases of building metro rail in Mumbai and Chennai, Abhay Mishra, CEO and MD of Mumbai Metro One, reflected on the initial uncertainties that surrounded ridership. Would the Mumbaikar, accustomed to the efficiency of local trains, adopt metro rail? Mishra pointed out that happily, the growth is now “in double digits”, and that Mumbai Metro’s ridership has evolved so well that one of the metro reaches now figures as the seventh most patronised in the world.

Speakers were:

Abhay Mishra, CEO & MD, Mumbai Metro One

Nalin J Gupta, MD, J Kumar Infraprojects

Pradeep Yadav IAS, Managing Director, Chennai Metro Rail

Surjit Madan, Head-Rail Systems, Amaravati Metro Rail

Aashish Chandorkar, Columnist and Writer, and Pratap Padode, Editor-in-Chief, Construction World, moderated the session.

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