- Contributions of Metro Rail Projects in the Urban Dynamics of Indian Metro Cities: Case Study of Chennai and Bangalore    click here to open paper content617 kb
by    Seerappalli Ponnusamy, Sekar & Karuppannan, Sadasivam | spsekar55@gmail.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
The recent introduction of the metro rail in Indian cities is to hype the urban dynamics. It is an opportunity to build compact, less carbon and walkable cities. It is also a challenge for planners to integrate them for making better cities.
Abstract
The recent economic boom in Asia had several impacts on its socio, economic and physical environments. These cities, especially Indian metros, are centuries old. Their morphogenetic structures are evolved based on the technology of that time. So only their older parts are with narrow roads, but had the economic center. Compared to the industrial nations, these cities are more horizontal than vertical nature. Economic boom led globalization opened the flood gates of many aspects but sure one of them is the increase of private ownership of automobiles. This led to the spread of commuter hinterland of Indian cities very far and fast phased. It had a saying impact on congestion, pollution, delay, cost per trip etc. With the history of narrow roads and highly sensitive for road widening the government had only one option i.e. introduction of Mass Rapid Transport Systems (MRTS) aimed at smart growth, compact development, low carbon, park and raid and creation of walkable neighborhoods. Therefore, in recent time, many forms of MRTS like metro rails , mono rails, sub urban rails etc are introduced covering all major metropolitan areas of India. New Delhi, the capital city of India has metro rail of 65 kms in phase I, 125 kms in phase II and many more area to be included in phase III. In Chennai it is anticipated that the metro rail would change the sub-mode spilt between bus and rail from 91:9 in 2004 to 65:35 in 2021. As the direct influence area of Chennai metro rail is about 20 percent and covering about 1 million people living within 500 meters of the stations. This influence zone is also to change its landuse pattern from primary residential to commercial and mixed residential use zone. Similarly, Bangalore city’s metro rail phase I is to cover about 0.7 million and likely to triple after introduction of phase II. The proposed landuse (2015) of Master plan of Bangalore indicates that there would be a shift of residential to mixed and commercial use in the influence area.
The challenge left to the planners at this juncture is the utilization of this opportunity on how to integrate these metro rail systems to meaningfully guiding physical development of the city. An attempt is made to study the pattern of impacts these systems are to induce in Indian metropolitan development. The Chennai city, the 31st largest city, about 9 million in 2012 in the world and Bangalore city, about 8.7 million by 2012, 33rd largest city in the world, serve as the case study for detail analysis.


Keywords
Rapid Urbanization - Metro transport- model share-landuse change-compact development
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context
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