While the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in Delhi has taken the Metro experience in the capital a notch higher by initiating trial runs for ‘driverless Metro train’, experts and urban planners are alarmed at the pace at which Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is functioning. They have termed chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s dream of having a 118-km-long Metro network in city and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) by 2019 as too ambitious.
“Driverless Metro is a far distant dream for the city, it will be very grateful if the MMRDA would bring normal Metro corridors as promised by the authority by 2019,” said A.V. Shenoy, an activist who has worked on many important civic issues including transport.
On Tuesday, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu flagged off one such Delhi Metro’s swanky new ‘driver-less’ trains, which was assembled in India and made by a Korea-based firm. The driverless Delhi Metro will be controlled from a control room and operations will be automated.
However, Mr Fadnavis, who is also the chairman of MMRDA had last year promised to have the 118-km-long Metro circle built in the city and MMR, which doesn’t seem anywhere close to reality as the MMRDA is currently focused on two elevated Metro corridors namely the Dahisar-DN Nagar Metro-2A and Dahisar east-Andheri east Metro-7 corridor keeping aside nearly a dozen of proposed Metro corridors in the city.
Frequent changes in alignment “MMRDA is said to tweak its alignment frequently and this could be due to the complication involved for brown-field project in a city like Mumbai. There are various railway intersections and costal regulation clearances and rehabilitation issues which act as an hurdle for MMRDA to carry out work on its Metro corridors,” said Jitendra Gupta, another activist who has worked on issues in the transport sector.
In the past one year the MMRDA has changed its alignment on various Metro corridors. The Metro-2 (Dahisar-Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd) is the best example, which was divided into three parts Dahisar to DN Nagar, Bandra to Mankhurd and DN Nagar to Bandra.
Tendering stage While the DMRC had prepared the master plan for Mumbai Metro in the mid 2000s, the MMRDA after completion of Metro-1 has not yet started on groundwork for any other Metro corridor. The authority has taken almost two years to reach the tendering stage for the Dahisar-DN Nagar Metro-2A and Dahisar east-Andheri east Metro-7 corridor. On the other hand, for the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), implementing agency of Colaba-Seepz Metro-3 underground corridor the same was approved back in 2012, but MMRC is yet to award civil contracts for the same.
Pankaj Joshi, the executive director of Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), said, “Be it underground or elevated, a Metro corridor’s preparation including land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement in a city like Mumbai takes substantial time and the deadline of 2019 for a 118-km-long Metro corridor is highly ambitious and looking at the complications it will easily take six to seven years for the city to see another Metro train running.” However, Mr Joshi said that the authority cannot be blamed for the delay as at a macro level one has to think technically when it comes to implementation of infrastructure projects.
Political deadline The MMRDA continues to experience problems like lack of experience when executing Metro projects and the source of finance for many of its proposed Metro corridors is also unclear.
“The deadline of 2019 is quite political and it is very evident from our past experiences that the MMRDA had started operations of Metro-1 and Monorail right before Lok Sabha elections. Similarly, 2019 is also an election year. The MMRDA officially has not given any timeline on how, when and what will be done by MMRDA,” added Mr Shenoy, the transport expert.
The other side “When it comes to practically implementing projects there is a possibility of it being a year or two late, but that does not means that the city will continue to suffer. We are doing out best to decongest traffic in the city and MMR by other solutions like bus lanes and flyovers,” said a senior MMRDA official.
