Mumbai Monorail snippets

With more monorail routes in the offing, Mumbaikars can look forward to a smoother and faster ride across the congested areas of the city. The metropolitan commissioner, Ratnakar Gaikwad, said Lea & Associates, which is conducting a comprehensive transportation study for the Mumbai region, will prepare a masterplan for monorail and the new links would seek to improve the east-west connectivity. Three routes have already been planned besides a fourth one, a Rs 2,500-crore project, which is supposed to connect Thane with Kalyan and Bhiwandi. The monorail will supplement the Metro rail routes, which there will be nine in the city. Work on the first one is already underway, which will be from Versova to Andheri to Ghatkopar. Gaikwad, who has just come back from a trip to China, Malaysia and Japan, said he was confident that the Malaysian firm, Scomi, which has teamed up with L&T to build the first monorail link in the city (Jacob Circle-Wadala- Chembur) would be able to meet the government expectations. The second route will be from Oshiwara to Kanjur Marg (10 km) and the third one from the Bandra-Kurla Complex to Bandra (E). A techno feasibility study for the intercity connectivity of Thane-Kalyan-Bhiwandi is also underway, said the MMRDA chief. “The consultants are Sowil, an internationally renowned firm, which collaborated with China Railway Eryan Engineering Group,’’ he added.Gaikwad and the state team that visited the Southeast Asia seemed to be more than impressed with the infrastructure development in Malaysia and China. The team also visited the company at Nanjing in China, which is making coaches for the Mumbai Metro One project. The first phase of the underground railway is expecting 64 coaches from the Chinese firm and the rakes will be delivered before April 2010.