A committee headed by Chief Secretary A Jayathilak was constituted on Wednesday to "conduct further discussions on the proposed alignment of the Thiruvananthapuram Metro project". The decision was taken at a high-level online meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. 

"The committee will examine the various issues related to the alignment of the project and would submit its recommendations," an official statement said. The CS-led committee will have as its members the secretaries of revenue, finance, local self-government and transport departments.

However, a deadline has not been fixed for the committee to submit its report. After the online meeting, Thiruvananthapuram MP Sashi Tharoor termed the discussions at the meeting "excellent". However, Tharoor had his version of the committee's terms of reference. He called it an "advisory committee" and said it had been constituted to "consult stakeholders on some of my proposals for the first phase".

"I have been clamouring for a metro (for Thiruvananthapuram) ever since becoming an MP," he said in an X post.  As it stands, two alignments are under consideration. One would run from Kazhakkoottam to Pappanamcode, cutting through the busiest areas in the capital city like Karyavattom, Medical College, Bakery Junction, Thampanoor and Karamana. 

An earlier alignment had proposed the route from Kazhakuttam in the north to East Fort in the heart of the capital, cutting through Medical College and Thampanoor. Tharoor's vision for the metro aligns closely with the former option (Kazhakottam-Pappanamcode) as it covers a larger part of the city. 

"Our vision for the Metro must be to anticipate the needs of generations yet unborn, while fulfilling the needs of today and minimising disruption in the present during its construction. I am confident that, with the right approach, we can make Thiruvananthapuram an ideal capital city for the 21st century," Tharoor said.

In 2012, National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC) had picked a conventional monorail as the best suited for a medium-sized city like Thiruvananthapuram from a bunch of alternatives. The alternatives, all of them suggested by 'Metroman' E Sreedharan, range from a Light Rail Transit System to the exotic Maglev system. When the Oommen Chandy government seemed to zero in on monorail, Sreedharan caused a flutter by suggesting a Kochi-style metro rail for Thiruvananthapuram.

In fact, way back in 1996, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation under him had said that it was a monorail system that was best suited for the capital. Chandy ignored Sreedharan's latest recommendation and went with the Metroman's earlier suggestion to have a monorail. Then it was said that a metro is advisable only for a city with a per hour per direction (PPD) passenger traffic of 40,000 or more, cities like Bangalore or Chennai. Thiruvananthapuram, at that point, has a PPD of less than 8000.   

A Light Rail Transit System was the other alternative mooted by Sreedharan. An LRTS was easy to construct, and the cost was also comparable to a monorail. However, experts found that a conventional monorail was environmentally sound and operationally smoother. Sreedharan had also recommended the Maglev system, a mode of transportation which uses magnetic levitation to suspend, guide and propel vehicles. It is a high-powered system which can accelerate and decelerate faster than a conventional monorail. It is also computer-controlled. 

However, the problem with Maglev was that the technology was then, and even now, not perfected. The first Maglev system introduced in Birmingham, Britain, in 1984 was closed in 1995 because the system was found to be unreliable. There is the safety factor, too. A Japanese test train in Miyazaki caught fire in 1991. Eventually, after the success of the Kochi Metro, a metro was seen as the right fit for Thiruvananthapuram, too.