Metro Express (Mauritius)

The Metro Express is a light rail public transport system in Mauritius.

The route runs between the capital Port Louis in the district of the same name and the cities of the Plaines Wilhems District, with an additional branch running between the city of Rose Hill and the University of Mauritius at Réduit.

Mauritius had been without a railway system following the closure of Mauritius Government Railways in the 1950s. The last passenger train ran on 31 March 1956, between Port Louis and Curepipe.

Due to increased car usage and chronic road congestion, plans for a light railway system had been proposed for many years. The idea of introducing Light Rail Transit was first floated in the 1970s and started being developed in the 1980s as a way to solve increasing road congestion.^{[citation needed]} The idea only started gaining traction in 1995, when the concept of light rail was formulated. The main argument against it was the cost of system construction. The investment was made in the development of road infrastructure instead, like building new roads and adding new lanes to existing motorways. Busways were considered but were not implemented.^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, during a visit to Singapore, the Prime Minister of Mauritius Navin Ramgoolam signed an intergovernmental agreement, under which the Singapore Cooperative Enterprise would assist Mauritius in preparing a request for a proposal document to be launched to potential developers. A delegation from SMRT Corporation was in Mauritius in March 2011 to study the possibilities of introducing the LRT system. In September 2012 the Government of Mauritius signed a contract with the Singapore Cooperative Enterprise, valued at around Rs 180 million ($6 million as of September 2012), for the determination of a feasible alignment of the light rail line, development of reference design and consideration of potential future line extension.

In December 2016, Sir Anerood Jugnauth gave the green light for the implementation of the Metro Express Project because of mitigating the rising cost of traffic congestion.

On 31 July 2017 in Ebene the Government of Mauritius signed a contract for the creation of a light rail transit system.

The project is led by the Indian company Larsen & Toubro, after winning a tender from the Government of Mauritius for Rs 18.8 billion (₹3,375 crores (₹33.75 billion); $557 million as of September 2017), of which Rs 9.9bn ($293M as of September 2017) is being provided by a grant from the Government of India.