Hon’ble FM Nirmala Sitharaman has expressed commitment to work towards raising the share of public transport in urban areas through expansion of metro rail network and augmentation of city bus service.

A new scheme will be launched at a cost of INR 18,000 crores to support augmentation of public bus transport services. The scheme will facilitate deployment of innovative PPP models to enable private sector players to finance, acquire, operate, and maintain over 20,000 buses. The scheme will boost the automobile sector, provide fillip to economic growth, create employment opportunities for our youth and enhance ease of mobility for urban residents.

A total of 702 km of conventional metro is operational and another 1,016 km of metro and RRTS is under construction in 27 cities. Two new technologies i.e., ‘MetroLite’ and ‘MetroNeo’ will be deployed to provide metro rail systems at much lesser cost with same experience, convenience and safety in Tier-2 cities and peripheral areas of Tier-1 cities.

Central counterpart funding will be provided to:

• Kochi Metro Railway Phase-II of 11.5 km at a cost of INR 1,957.05 crores.
• Chennai Metro Railway Phase-II of 118.9 km at a cost of INR 63,246 crores.
• Bengaluru Metro Railway Project Phase 2A and 2B of 58.19 km at a cost of INR 14,788 crores.
• Nagpur Metro Rail Project Phase-II and Nashik Metro at a cost of INR 5,976 crores and INR 2,092 crores, respectively.

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