Monorail delayed, yet again

THE ASIAN AGE. | SHRUTI GANAPATYE

Published : Jun 9, 2017, 2:27 am IST

Updated : Jun 9, 2017, 2:28 am IST

CM miffed over deadline revisions, says start services this year itself.

Mumbai: The MMRDA has revised the deadline for monorail for the 15th time and kept the same for December 2017. For now, 98 per cent of the monorail phase two construction from Wadala to Jacob Circle has been completed and trial runs for the same will commence soon. Miffed with the recurring delays, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis himself asked the MMRDA to start the services this year. An MMRDA official said, “We ensured the CM that the project will be completed in December this year and be open for public use.”

The pending infrastructure project was reviewed by the CM in a war room meeting held last month. He was told that the first phase of monorail from Wadala to Chembur, which began three years back, is facing financial losses. “The planning of the project was not proper. A city like Mumbai needs mass transport system and monorail has not much capacity. There was inordinate delay in the project because of finances and space constraints as its route passes through a very congested area,” an official who attended the war room meeting said.

The project date was earlier extended due to various reasons. Since the monorail passes through a very congested area and also over the railway bridge at Currey Road, it took a lot of time to construct the monorail bridge. Also, narrow lanes, congested localities, litigations against the project delayed it further. The project was initiated by late chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh during Congress-NCP regime. The idea was to have a taxi like vehicle to connect commuters from railway station to their house.

The government is now trying to make metro station available on the monorail’s route for easy transportation.

Phase I deadlines

March 2010
December 2010
May 2011
November 2011
May 2012
December 2012
June 2013
August 2013
September 2013
October 2013
December 2013
January 2014

Phase II deadlines

March 2010
December 2010
May 2011
December 2011
May 2012
December 2012
December 2013
June 2014
December 2014
March 2015
December 2015
April 2016
December 2016
July 2017