atlas completes first sale to india

*Glad to see Atlas entering new markets.

*Agree with others that the expansion needs to end without an infrastructure agreement in place first.

*I expect IO to have 1 or 2 more down days then a push up above $100/t

Bloomberg Jun 3, 2014

Add up all the metro-rail track in India -- population, 1.2 billion -- and it’s still less than in New York City.

Now, after decades of neglect, local leaders have embarked on India’s most ambitious urban construction project: 22 cities plan to build or extend subways at a projected cost of about 2 trillion rupees ($33 billion), according to Bloomberg News calculations based on official estimates.

Newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised bullet trains and reduced dependence on cars, is set to give a push to infrastructure investment. The need is urgent in a country already choking on emissions and congestion. The Asian Development Bank estimates that overloaded roads shave at least 2 percent off the economic output of India and every other Asian nation.

By 2031, the population of India’s biggest cities will almost triple to 277 million -- more than the current population of Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation -- from 108 million in 2001, Barclays Bank Plc projects.

“We are way behind,” said Rajeev Jyoti, head of the railway business at Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (LT), which is building the metro in Hyderabad. “Mass-transit systems have to be thought of 30 years in advance. In India, it is always about just playing catch up,” said Jyoti, who previously headed Bombardier Inc. (BBD/B)’s transport unit in India.

New Delhi Track

The country now has about 225 kilometers (140 miles) of metro rail lines, almost all accounted for by New Delhi’s 190 kilometers. That compares with about 1,700 kilometers in China and New York City’s 1,062 kilometers of passenger track.

India needs to increase its total more than 10 times to at least 2,500 kilometers by 2031 to accommodate the expected surge in intracity commuters, reduce pollution and cut road fatalities, according to Venugopal Garre, Manish Agarwal and Saurabh Mishra, Barclays Bank analysts in Mumbai.

“We definitely see a major push for growing and developing metro-rail projects,” said Bharat Salhotra, managing director at Alstom SA (ALO)’s India transport business. “India is really on the cusp of urban transformation.”