Much awaited Kochi Water Metro service to start soon on city’s north side

Receiving highly favourable response from the public on its Vypeen-High Court Junction and Kakkanad-Vyttila routes, the Kochi Water Metro is all set to start service on the city’s north side. This will include covering areas of Eloor, Cheranalloor and South Chittoor.

Incidentally, the work on the terminals in these areas is nearly completed and KWML officials expect the service to start as soon as they receive more boats from Cochin Shipyard Ltd.

So far of 23 hybrid boats, CSL has delivered nine. At present five boats are operating on the Vypeen-High Court while three are on Vyttila-Kakkanad route. One boat is kept on standby.

Service on the three new routes will be started only after three new boats are received. KWML is expecting delivery of two boats from CSL this month. Following this every month one more boat will be added according to the officials.

Launched in April this year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Water Metro – first in India – has received tremendous positive response. Initially there were 9,000 passengers per day on the High Court-Vypeen route which later stabilised to 5,000 while on the second route there has been a consistent number of passengers.

The project plans to cover 15 routes connecting 38 terminals across 10 island communities. In all, these 15 routes will cover 76 kilometres.