Mumbai:
It is Mumbai's brand new infrastructure project to improve and refurbish the city's mass rapid transport systems. The Mumbai Monorail will augment local railway services and is expected to offer faster connectivity and link up the existing Central, Western and Harbour lines. The project will connect Jacob's Circle in town to suburban Chembur, a distance of over 20 kilometres.
India's first monorail will be the second longest monorail system in the world after Osaka. The ultramodern sleek trains, which can run up to a maximum speed of 81 kilometre per hour, will be running at an average speed of 31 kilometre per hour. Each train will have four coaches that can carry over five hundred passengers. According to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), provisions will be made so that women can travel comfortably.
The monorail is being built at a cost of Rs 2700 crore. Phase I of the Monorail will connect the suburbs of Wadala and Chembur. Phase II will connect Jacob's Circle in south Mumbai to Wadala.
The Wadala-Chembur link is expected to be complete by the end of this year. It will cut travel time between the two suburbs to 15 minutes. For the Jacob's Circle to Wadala link, it will take another year after Phase I operations begin.
Once the service starts, trains will run at a frequency of four and a half minutes from Jacobs Circle to Wadala and a frequency of nine minutes between Wadala and Chembur.
The first phase, which was expected to start services by mid-2012, will now by operational only by the end of this year. Six rakes will be pressed into service for Phase I. To address over-crowding, monorail authorities have two solutions: One is to increase the number of coaches on each rake and the other is to increase the frequency of trains.
The delays were caused due to faulty mapping of underground utilities. MMRDA chief Rahul Asthana said, "One of the major reasons for the delay in shifting underground utilities for the monorail construction was faulty mapping". MMRDA additional commissioner Ashwini Bhide added, "Even though the project was delayed, it was never stuck."
Commenting on the delays, TRK Moorthy, Chief of Transport and Communications MMRDA said, "Mumbai has many surprises especially when it comes to underground utilities."
When asked about the deadline of Phase II, Mr Asthana said, "I would not hazard a guess on the completion of Phase II at the moment, but it will take a year from the completion of Phase I.
The Mumbai Monorail has been commissioned under the Indian Tramways Act. Once completed, it will ease road traffic along its route. The monorail fares will be around one and a half times the amount it takes to travel by bus. But whether more monorail projects will be commissioned in the future will be decided only after this one is up and running.