Despite services on first phase of Monorail between Chembur and Wadala was restarted on Saturday, ten months after its services were suspended owing to fire incident, commuters will have to wait till March 2019 for the second phase between Wadala and Mahalaxmi to start.
The delay over starting the services on the second phase of Monorail despite having safety clearance of Monorail is due to shortage of functional trains. Out of the total 10 trains only four trains are functional, and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has said only after around seven to eight trains are functional by February 2019, its services will be started from March 2019.
"Out of the four trains currently, three trains are operational, and one train is on standby for emergencies. These three trains are currently able maintain a frequency of 15 minutes but if we want second phase to be made operational, and also maintain frequency of around 15-20 minutes we at least need 7 trains functional," said a MMRDA official.
The MMRDA official added, "We have asked the Malaysian operator Scomi Engineering to fix the balance six trains by procuring necessary spare parts, and enable the operations for second start by March 2019."
According to sources in MMRDA the functional four trains also have some issues like cooling of air-conditioning, internal passenger announcement system but the trains are safe for operations. "We have stuck emergency contact numbers inside every Monorail for coach for every passenger during emergency.
One Monorail train has four coaches and MMRDA anticipates the ridership to go up to around 1 lakh passengers using Monorail daily to around 15,000 passengers daily using for first phase.
The construction contract of Mumbai Monorail was awarded in 2008 to Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Scomi Engineering, and the project has been in controversy since its inception due to technical glitches, and has also come under the scanner of Comptroller Auditor and General of India (CAG) over irregularities.
