Developing sustainable transport infrastructure in Surat

AFD is supporting the Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation develop a metro in the rapidly growing city of Surat. The project seeks to decrease carbon emissions, reduce dependence on motorized transport and make sustainable public transport accessible to all.

Context

Located in the state of Gujarat, Surat is a former seaport and eighth largest cit in India. Like many other Indian cities, Surat is going through a period of rapid population growth and is expected to 11 million habitants by 2035. This necessarily requires the city to adapt its urban planning with a view to accommodate an additional 6M population and their mobility needs.

Surat is primarily growing along its transport corridors. Average household incomes in the city are high and, as a result, motorisation rates are already high and increasing. Parallelly, the use of public transport remains low This is likely due to the relatively low frequency of its services and the lack of a fully dedicated corridor for the BRT network, which increase the travel time in the most congested areas of the city.

Description

Surat’s high population growth rate, coupled with high economic growth rate has resulted in an ever increasing demand for transport, creating excessive pressure on the existent transport system. Congestion on roads has been increasing due to a phenomenal rise in private transport. The absence of an efficient fullfledged public transport system coupled with rapid growth in the use of personalized vehicles has led to high consumption of fossil fuel and increase in environmental pollution.

The general objective of the project is to improve the mobility of the inhabitants while promoting a sustainable development of the agglomeration.

The construction of the Surat Metro has several specific objectives: