YEIDA to introduce India’s first pod taxi

Noida: YEIDA announced to run India's first pod taxi which will connect the Noida International Airport in Jewar with Film City in Sector 21. The DPR was drafted by the Indian Port Rail and Ropeway Corporation Limited, a company owned by the central government.

The proposed pod taxi route in Yamuna City will be the largest in the world. The proposed pod taxi corridor will be 14.6 kilometers long. Countries where pod taxis are running do not have such a big corridor. The DPR for the project was prepared, and the authority will soon take a decision.

YEIDA is currently studying the personal rapid transit (PRT) system operational in London (Heathrow Airport), Abu Dhabi (Masdar City), and Korea (Suncheon). YEIDA will start construction work on the pod taxi soon after the state government approves the DPR. Officials inform that after discussing the technical aspects of the project, YEIDA finalized the revised DPR, and a bid document will be issued to select the company to build the project.

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Shailendra Bhatia, an officer on special duty at the Yamuna Authority, said that earlier the biggest challenge for this type of project was the availability of land, but that would not be the case with YEIDA. He further stated ‘we already have 75-meter-wide roads for this system, which will come up on the central verge. The  alignment is 14.6 kilometers long, and will pass through many industrial and residential sectors in the city.

The project will be connecting 12 stations and Yamuna City will have stations like Sector-29, Handicraft Park, MSME Park, Apparel Park, Sector-32, Sector-33, Toy Park and Sector-21, etc. The length of this corridor will be 14.6 km. Pod taxis will come in two phases. The authority will buy 146 pod taxis in the first phase and 799 in the second phase.

Pod taxis will run without a driver. According to the DPR, when the operation of pod taxis starts, about eight thousand passengers will travel daily. Pod taxis will run at a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour. In a pod taxi, eight passengers will be able to sit while travelling and 13 passengers will travel standing. Its fare can be fixed at Rs. 8 per kilometer.