Around five acres of green space in Aarey Colony will make space for a 32-storey operations control centre (OCC) for all proposed and under construction Metro corridors in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the MMRDA has said.
The control centre is said to be one of the biggest ones planned for any Metro body.
Aarey Colony in Goregaon is one of the last remaining green spaces in the city. Earlier, construction of a Metro car depot here, for the Colaba-Seepz Metro-3, was opposed by environmentalists and has been challenged in the National Green Tribunal.
A senior official of MMRDA, which is the implementing agency for Metro rail in the megapolis, requesting anonymity, said, "We are going to have a 32-storey control centre in Aarey Colony on a five-acre plot by availing floor space index of 4, and it will control operations of all Metro corridors coming up in MMR. Every Metro corridor, though, will have a separate car depot and control centre inside the depot that will act as backup in case of a failure or an emergency."
MMRDA officials said the Aarey plot identified faces Western Express Highway (WEH) and will affect minimum bumber of trees. He also said MMRDA will not require any permission from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for constructing a control centre, since the state government has declared MMRDA a special planning authority (SPA) for Metro corridors in the city.
"We do not require any permission from BMC. So not having reservation for the control centre in BMC's development plan 2034 does not have any effect on our plan," said the MMRDA official.
The MMRDA has plans to construct around 200-km Metro network in MMR, of which construction on around five projects is ongoing. The total expenditure for the network will cost more than Rs 80,000 crore.
