Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises plans to operate a two way high speed monorail system in Bangalore on the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises peripheral road, and the company expects the Bangalore Metro to be a feeder for its monorail services. The 41 kilometer NICE peripheral road connects Tumkur Road and Hosur Road.

The first phase of the Bangalore Metro, which includes the 18.1 kilometer East-West corridor and the 24.2 kilometer North South corridor is expected to be completed by end 2011.

Mr Manjunath Nayaker VP public relations and liaison of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises Ltd told Business Line that “Work will start as soon as the Bangalore Metro Rail is up and running, since Metro will work as a feeder for our monorail services.”

The Bangalore Metro intersects Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise's Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor at the starting point of the link road on the existing Mysore Road and Kengeri on Mysore Road.

Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises said that it would take the company 24 months to the monorail service in place, as primary structures are already available.

What would be added are concrete beams on the median of the BMIC that the monorail will run on and the stations.

Mr Nayaker said that “We have a central median of 40 ft on the corridor, and we will run the monorail on the central median.”

NICE plans to set up seven stations on the peripheral road and two on the link road to the BMIC.

He said that the monorail system had been included in the scope of activities for the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project, but added that some clearances were needed to start work. NICE is already in talks with Japanese companies for the technology, he said.

He added that when operational, this could, perhaps, be the country's first private-run monorail system.

(Sourced from BL)