Politics Insight News Without Politics
Virendra Singh Rawat
Business Writer
India’s latest metro rail service Lucknow Metro Rail has partnered with HDFC Bank for providing 360 degree digital banking and financial solutions to its passengers.
Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC) had launched commercial metro rail services on September 6, a day after union home minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had flagged off the maiden commercial run on the ‘priority’ section of 8.5 km.
Under the tie-up, HDFC Bank would facilitate digital payments by Lucknow Metro passengers for travel, apart from reloading their metro smart cards.
The collaborating partners have also launched co-branded prepaid cards for cashless travel. The bank would also set up ATMs at the metro stations, HDFC Bank regional head (UP) Kumar Sanjeev said.
“In near future, we would offer the facility of authenticating passengers through Aadhar card and payments gateway BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) for financial transactions by the metro passengers,” he informed. BHIM is a mobile app developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI).
The priority section of 8.5 km stretches from the vicinity of Lucknow airport to Charbagh railway station of North-South (N-S) corridor, which has been built at a cost of about Rs 2,0000 crore.
As per the detailed project report (DPR), the N-S corridor measuring 23 km would cost nearly Rs 6,880 crore and would be complete by April 2019. Of this, the European Investment Bank (EIB) would provide about RS 3,500 crore.
Another East-West (E-W) corridor measuring 11 km would cost nearly Rs 5,494 crore.
While, N-S corridor would comprises 19 elevated and 3 underground stations (total 22), the E-W corridor would comprise 5 elevated and 7 underground stations (12).
French multinational Alstom has been contracted to manufacture the rolling stock (coaches) of Lucknow Metro. In September 2015, LRMC had collaborated with Alstom to supply 80 metro cars for 20 train sets of four cars each for servicing the N-S corridor.
The metro signalling system is being jointly supplied by Alstom’s units in Bengaluru (Karnataka, India) and Saint-Ouen, France.
The earth work on Lucknow Metro had started on October 27, 2014 and the public investment board (PIB) had approved the project on August 6, 2015. On December 23, 2015, the union cabinet had given its nod to the 23 km route of N-S corridor.
Lucknow has a population of nearly 5 million. There has been tremendous horizontal growth in the state capital and in such a dynamic scenario, a modern urban rapid rail transit system is imperative to facilitate faster commuting and decongesting traffic.
