Malaysia to send two more Monorail stocks next month

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is set to receive two monorail rolling stocks from Malaysia next month. These rolling stocks would be used on both phases of the project.

“We are expecting Scomi Engineering to send two rolling stocks by the end of October, which will used for the first phase of the project for now. In the later stage, another three rolling stocks will be added to them, which would increase the number of total rolling stocks to 15. Of the ten rolling stocks (that are operational on the 8-km-long Chembur-Wadala line), we are running four because six are under maintenance. Once the second phase is commissioned, problems related to the services would be resolved,” said Sanjay Khandare, additional metropolitan commissioner.

Five more rolling stocks are to be added for the benefit of commuters for both phases. The first rolling stock arrived in India from Malaysia back in 2010. Each rolling stock consists of four cars with carrying capacity of 564 seats. The total length of the four-car rolling stock is 54.4 metres

The 10-km-long phase-II monorail corridor between Wadala and Jacob Circle in Mahalaxmi is to be commissioned prior to the civic polls in February 2017.

The project was to be implemented in phases and actually was supposed to be completed in 30 months from the date of execution in November 2008. The project was awarded to a consortium of Larsen & Toubro and Scomi Engineering of Malaysia on the ‘design, built, operate and maintain’ model at a total cost of Rs 2,716 crore.

MMRDA is also set to increase the fare structure for the monorail after the commencement of the second phase. Currently, MMRDA charges Rs 5 to Rs 11 between Wadala and Chembur depending on the distance travelled, due to which the body has been incurring losses of Rs 10 lakh per day despite the number of commuters using Monorail having increased from approximately 14,000 per day since its inception to 19,000.