Hyderabad on Tuesday joined the league of Indian cities to get its own metro, with the inauguration of the first phase in this historical city by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who also took a ride from Miyapur to Kukatpally stations.After the formal inauguration, the metro will be thrown open for commercial operations from Wednesday.The 30 km-long first phase from Nagole to Miyapur has 24 stations covering several busy clusters and city landmarks, including the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, Osmania University, Secunderabad Railway Station and major commercial hubs like Begumpet and Ameerpet.After the flagging off the Prime Minister also took a ride on the Metro along with Telangana Chief MInister K. Chandrasekar Rao, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and other senior officialsHe also witnessed an audio visual presentation on metro and released a mobile app named Metro Sawari on the occasion.This largest metro project in the world in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode was conceived way back in 2007, and was actually grounded in 2010. However, the foundation stone of the project was laid in December 2012.The project, which was once on the brink of collapse, saw many ups and downs since L&T won the bid in 2010 to build the 71.2-km elevated metro on three corridors.
It achieved financial closure for Rs 12,674 crore while Government of India was to fund Rs 1,458 crore under Viability Gap Funding (VGF).Many including India's metro man E. Sreedharan had doubts whether the project in PPP mode will ever take off.This first phase of Metro is all set to end congestion and traffic jams in the city and people now hope to get relief at least on the stretch connecting Uppal, a burgeoning suburb in the eastern part to Kukatpally, a densely populated neighbourhood near IT hub Hitec City in Western Hyderabad.Another key feature will be the integration with other modes of transport like buses, taxis, auto-rickshaws and even bicycles to ensure end-to-end connectivity.