KOLKATA, INDIA: Amid the chaos of cranky overcrowded buses, rickshaws, motorcars and a mad rush of a million pedestrians, a new swanky rapid transport system is threatening to change the city's maddening 'trafficscape'.

The West Bengal government is getting serious about building an overland transport system with the skybus at its centre.

The government's hopes are inspired by a successful skybus project in Goa that is cheap to build, durable and user-friendly.

With only six percent of the city covered by roads, traffic in Kolkata is breaching its capacity even with new flyovers being built. The city has an underground railway service that extends only south to north.

"An overland transport system has, thus, become imperative. We are looking at the Goa model of skybuses," a senior transport department official told IANS.

Basudeb Acharya, MP of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) that heads the state's coalition government, has been entrusted with the task of pursuing the project.

Acharya has visited Goa and spoken to Konkan railway authorities that have built the skybus in the coastal state's Margao city.

The government has become interested in the skybus project because it would easier than building new underground train connections.

While the cost of building one km of underground railway track is some Rs.1 billion, it would cost half that amount for building infrastructure for the skybus.

The two-coach skybus that the state is planning can ferry 120 passengers. The tickets would be cheap.

The plan is to introduce the system in the city's most congested areas to take the load off the roads.

The state government is now looking at its funds position. It hopes to get financial assistance from the central budget, which kept aside Rs.55 billion for infrastructure development in top cities during 2005-06.

IANS