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Mumbai to
get India's first monorail in two weeks
Thursday, September 16, 2010 08:50:21 AM,
IANS
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Mumbai:
Indicating that the prestigious Mumbai monorail project is on
schedule, a top official said here Wednesday that six trains will
ply in the first phase from later this month.
Six trains, each with four air-conditioned cars, will be deployed
on the nine-km-long Chembur-Wadala sector in eastern Mumbai, which
is around 60 percent complete, said Mumbai Metropolitan Region
Development Authority (MMRDA) Joint Commissioner Ashwini Bhide.
"The civil work and most of the system including communications
and signalling for phase one will be in place by December," Bhide
said here Wednesday evening.
The Rs.3,000-crore (around $648 million) monorail project is
expected to ease the transportation woes of Mumbai's nearly eight
million suburban train commuters.
It would benefit around 1.8 million commuters and this figure is
expected to increase as the network expands, Bhide pointed out.
Besides the Chembur-Wadala link, the 11-km-long Wadala-Jacob
Circle (Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk) sector is expected to be ready
by end-2011.
The average speed of the monorail trains will be 30 kmph with a
frequency of four minutes and a fare of Rs.8-20 for a one-way
trip. It will run for 19 hours daily.
According to Bhide, the monorail will be attractive even for
private vehicle owners to use the comfortable form of public
transport.
Monorail systems around the world are considered ideal for urban
congested corridors, due to its low footprint at the ground level.
It runs on rubber wheels, reducing noise pollution and serves as a
feeder mode of transport to supplement the other mass transport
system and essentially cover routes that are difficult to expand
or widen.
The Mumbai monorail system, currently under construction, since
February 2009, will be the first monorail in India.
On Jan 26, the monorail shot into the limelight when Chief
Minister Ashok Chavan inaugurated a test run at Wadala, raising
hopes of Mumbaikars, that the project will soon be implemented.
Taking a cue from Mumbai, the Pune Municipal Corporation also
followed suit and announced a 52-km-long monorail project to ease
traffic in the state's IT and education capital.
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