Hyderabad Metro among world's 8 most spectacular infra projects

The ambitious Hyderabad Metro Rail was awarded the Best Engineering Project of the year by the Global Infrastructure Leadership Forum Conference.

The project was shortlisted out of 100 projects from around the world. The project will cost around Rs 17,000 crore to develop and will ease travelling for about 1.7 million people.

Let’s take a look at this year’s eight biggest infrastructure projects that were shortlisted by the Global Infrastructure Leadership Forum Conference.

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Panama Canal

Location: Panama

The Panama Canal is a 77.1-kilometre ship canal. It connects Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

When the Canal was built at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was considered to an engineering marvel. It opened in 1914.

Due its connectivity, the canal reduced the time taken for ships to travel from Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

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The canal is undergoing expansion to accommodate bigger ships and ward off competition.

According to Wikipedia, the project will build two new locks, one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides, widen and deepen existing channels, and raise Gatun Lake's maximum operating level.

The total cost of the project is estimated to be about $5.25 billion. The construction was approved in 2006 and is due for completion in 2014.

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Marmaray Project

Location: Turkey

The Marmaray Project is the upgrading of approximately 76 kilometres of commuter rail from Halkalı to Gebze. This also involves construction of an undersea tunnel.

According to the Turkey government’s website, ‘the Project provides an upgrading of the commuter rail system in Istanbul, connecting Halkalı on the European side with Gebze on the Asian side with an uninterrupted, modern, high-capacity commuter rail system.’

Railway tracks in both sides of Istanbul Strait will be connected to each other through a railway tunnel connection under the Istanbul Strait.

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The project started in 2004 and was supposed to start in 2009 but was delayed due to the discovery of historical and archaeological finds.

The total cost of the project is expected to be approximately $2.5 billion. But this increased due to delays.

The first phase of the project opened in October 2013.

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Beijing's new international airport

Location: China

Beijing, the capital city of the China, is one of the most important cities in the world. The city’s current airport is the second largest in the world in terms of passenger capacity, and is running at maximum capacity.

To handle the growing traffic, China has decided to construct another airport. The BeijingDaxingInternationalAirport will be built outside the capital city.

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It will have room for 130 million passengers and 5.5 million tonnes of cargo each year. As per the current design, the new airport will cover an area of 6,620 acres.

When fully functional, the airport is expected to replace the US's Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as the world's busiest.

A Dutch airport consulting firm, Netherlands Airport Consultants (NACO), has won the bid to design the new airport's master plan.

The new airport is expected to have eight runways and one military runway.

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Etihad Rail Network

Location: United Arab Emirates

UAE is going big with railways. The country is planning to lay down rail network spanning over 1,200 kilometres.

Etihad Rail’s network will extend across the United Arab Emirates, from the border of Saudi Arabia to the border of Oman. The network will run from Ghweifat to Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the Northern Emirates with major connecting points in between, including Al Ain and Madinat Zayed.

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Etihad Rail will have an extensive national network with freight terminals, distribution centres and depots located close to major transport hubs, warehouses, and storage facilities across the UAE.

The Etihad Rail network will also connect with the GCC network and this - once fully established - will cover the five GCC countries of The Kingdom of Bahrain, The State of Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and UAE.

The project is expected to cost about $11 billion.

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The LAPSSET Project

Location: Kenya

The Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project or The Lamu corridor is a transport and infrastructure project in Kenya that when complete will be the country's second transport corridor.

The cost of LAPSSET is was estimated at $16 billion. Recent estimates put the project cost between at around $25.5 billion.

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It’s a high ambitious project that include a port, railway network, road network, oil pipelines oil refinery, three airports, and three resort cities.

On completion, the project will also link landlocked South Sudan and Ethiopia to the Indian Ocean.

Silvester Kasuku, chief executive of LAPSSET, told Reuters that a consortium of companies led by China Communications Construction Company has won a $484 million contract to build the first three berths at Lamu port.

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London Crossrail

Location: United Kingdom

Crossrail is the new high frequency, high capacity railway for London and the South East. It will shorten journey times, reduce overcrowding and open up new areas of the city.

It will connect the outer suburbs to the heart of the City and West End, as well as providing a quick route between central London and Heathrow Airport.

Crossrail will provide a 10 per cent increase in London’s rail capacity, so it will relieve congestion on many existing rail and Tube lines.

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It will bring 1.5 million more people across London within a 45-minute commute of the key business districts of the West End, City and Docklands.

When completed, will be a 118-kilometre network and is considered to be Europe's largest railway and infrastructure construction project

The main feature of the project is the construction of 42 km of new tunnels. The project cost is currently estimated at $23 billion.

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NITC Bridge

Location: US and Canada

The New International Trade Crossing or NITC is an international construction project and committee between Canada and the United States to create a new border crossing over the DetroitRiver, according to Wikipedia.

The proposed NITC is a new end-to-end border crossing system between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario intended to improve the flow of international trade between the US and Canada at the busiest border crossing.

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At present, over 8,000 trucks cross the Detroit border on a daily basis. Ninety-nine percent of the traffic crosses a very narrow, 83 year old bridge that has no direct freeway-to-freeway connection. The new bridge will take load of the old one.

The new bridge will include six 12-foot-wide traffic lanes (three in each direction), ten-foot-wide outside shoulders, a three-foot-wide median and a five-foot-wide sidewalk on one side of the bridge.

The project cost is estimated to be around $950 million.

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Hyderabad Metro

Location: India

Hyderabad Metro Rail is being implemented entirely on public-private-partnership mode. The Phase I of the project includes three lines covering a distance of around 71 km.

The project is considered to be the world’s largest project under public-private partnership model, with investments of over Rs 17,000 crore. It is expected to provide daily transport for up to 1.7 million commuter by 2017.

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The project will have three elevated corridors interlacing the city of Hyderabad having metro stations en route in a distance of 1 km approximately.

The stations would be equipped with escalators, lifts and staircase for the convenience of the passengers.

The Metro Rail Network will pass through the principal roads of Hyderabad, which connects major bus hubs, residential and commercial spots.

The proposed rail will have a maximum speed of 80 kmph, the average speed of the trains will be around 34 kmph - an international standard for MRT systems.

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There will be three corridors. Corridor I will be between Miyapur and L.B.Nagar that will stretch around 29 kms.

Corridor II will be from Jubilee Bus Station to Falaknuma - a 15 kms stretch. And Corridor III will stretch from Nagole to Shilparmam measuring about 28 kms.

Recently TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao accused that Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy received kickbacks from L&T for the project and that valuable public land was being taken away in the name of the project.

L&T, however, denied any of these and said that the company is ready for a probe.