If officials of Scomi, a Malaysian infrastructure company, which, along with Larsen & Toubro, is part of the consortium building Mumbai’s first monorail, are to be believed, the first leg of the single-track train service will be ready by the end of next year.
Work on the Rs2,640 crore project, which is also India’s first monorail venture, began in November last year. It will cover a 20km stretch between Jacob Circle and Chembur with 30 trains of four coaches each.
“We are going ahead full steam with the Mumbai project,” Suhaimi Tan Sri Yaacob, country president of Scomi, told DNA. “We are confident of completing the first leg from Wadala to Chembur by December 2010.”
The next leg (between Jacob Circle and Wadala) would also be completed in the agreed time frame if the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) provides the necessary “right of way” clearances, he said.
Asked about some transport experts preferring a bus rapid transit system (BRTS) to the monorail, Yaacob said traffic could be effectively decongested only by light rail transport systems (LRTS) like the monorail. “Monorail is a system which is synergistic as well as coexistent [with other systems],” he said. On the other hand, Yaacob said, BRTS needs “continuous long routes which most cities in the world, including Mumbai, don’t have”.
The Brazilian city of Sao Paulo has dropped a whole metro project and replaced it with the monorail, according to Kanesan Veluppillai, president of Scomi International. He said Brazil is carrying out as many as 21 monorail projects in one go for the 2014 football World Cup. He added that the top 20 cities of the world have a demography similar to Mumbai’s and LRTS is the “only solution” to decongest the city’s transport.
Dilip Kawathkar, spokesman for the MMRDA, confirmed that the first test run of the monorail will be carried out between Wadala depot and Bhakti Park on January 26 next.
He said 70% of the work on piles (pillars to support the monorail) and 40% of pile-capping work had been completed.
The UK-based Artevea Digital, meanwhile, has signed a deal with Scomi to provide safety systems for the monorail. Artevea chairman Manoj Mohanka said Mumbaikars will have the safest monorail ride.
