After Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s first official visit to Northern Andhra, the shelved Visakha Metro Rail project regained prominence. Naidu committed to developing Visakha as the financial capital of the state and announced that the Port City would soon get its metro. Although he proposed this project during his previous term, the YS Jagan regime put it on hold.
As per the instructions of the Chief Minister, the officials will make some changes in the previous designs regarding this project. The authorities will link the metro designs to the flyovers that the National Highways Authority will construct.
To this extent, officials are drawing up a plan to move ahead in coordination with NHAI. There is a possibility to make some changes in the comprehensive project report regarding the metro.
During the review of North Andhra projects, Chandrababu conveyed his priority to AP Metrorail Corporation MD UJM Rao to take the metro works forward. NHAI has already prepared proposals for the construction of flyovers at many places in the city to control traffic congestion.
He expressed the opinion that problems may arise if they build the bridges for the metro after constructing them. Demolishing the existing ones and building new ones leads to financial loss and brings problems.
In this context, the CM stated in the review that constructions should, in principle, serve both NHAI and the Metro. At present, NHAI has prepared a DPR to construct 12 flyovers in Visakhapatnam.
The YSRCP government severely neglected the Visakha Metro Rail Project. They did no work except for shifting the office from Vijayawada to Visakhapatnam. The then TDP government held a pre-bid meeting in 2017 itself. In 2018, Essel Infra Consortium filed a financial bid after 5 qualified construction companies showed interest.
The whole process came to a standstill due to the aftermath of the election during the project’s completion. After the YSRCP government came into power in 2019, they canceled the DPR and the previously called tenders, undertaking a new one instead.
