India’s ambitious airport connectivity projects have included the construction of Jewar International Airport in one of Delhi’s suburbs topping the list of infrastructure-oriented priorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. It has emerged that the airport, being developed in Delhi’s National Capital Range (NCR) in Noida, will have a ‘pod taxi’ service to boost the last-mile connectivity.
he service, reportedly called driverless Personal Rapid Transport (PRT), will facilitate connectivity between the Jewar airport and Film City in Noida.
According to an India Today report, the stretch currently extends to about 14.1 kilometers between the two destinations. ‘Pod taxi’ will be built at a cost of ₹810 crore, the report said, adding that it will pass through sectors 28, 29, 21 and 32 of Gautam Budh Nagar district colloquially called NOIDA after New Okhla Industrial Development Authority.
What are Pod Taxis?
Pod Taxis are electric vehicles. They are driverless modes of transport.
These are small automated cars which are designed to transport a handful of passengers from one place to another at a much faster speed.
These vehicles move on a track and are electrically powered. These tracks are of course made separately on roads to avoid the regular day-to-day traffic.
What does it mean?
It means an important mark in eco-friendly last mile means of connectivity.
The driverless mode of transport is also cost-effective, pro-environmental and convenient.
The state of Uttar Pradesh, where Gautam Budh Nagar is situated, will be India’s first state to get this international transit system which already exists in Dubai, Singapore, and Heathrow Airport in London among other places.
The Noida International Airport near New Delhi is being built from scratch in phases and is expected to cater to 30-50 million passengers per year (MPPA) over the next 10-15 years, according to India’s civil aviation ministry.
Air travel in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, has boomed in the last decade as it opened up to competition, ticket prices were slashed and the number of people wealthy enough to travel swelled.
Air traffic in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport is expected to reach up to 91 million passengers per year in the next three years and touch its peak handling capacity of 109 million passengers per year by 2024.
