India`s first Monorail takes off, commercial operations to begin from Sunday

Zee Media Bureau

Mumbai: After years of delays and overcoming many a operational hiccups, the country`s first Monorail finally made its debut here today with Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan inaugurating the service. The 8.9-kilometre long monorail service between Wadala and Chembur in the central-eastern suburbs of the metropolis will become operational after a delay of over two years. The commercial operations will begin tomorrow onwards. The Rs 3,000-crore monorail project is being implemented in two phases. The first phase comprises the 8.9 km long Wadala-Chembur section, while in the second phase the services will be extended to Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk in South Mumbai. The fares have been fixed between Rs 5-11 for the first phase of operations. In the first phase, six trains will operate while another 10 will be added in the second. To begin with, the services will operate with four coaches having a combined carrying capacity of 2,300 passengers at every 15 minutes. The project has been executed by a consortium of engineering major Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) and Malaysian firm Scomi Engineering and owned and operated by MMRDA. The monorail is expected to reduce the travel time between Wadala and Chembur by almost half, from 40 minutes at present to nearly 21 minutes. MMRDA has already spent Rs 1,900 crore of the Rs 3,000 crore allocated for the project. The civil work on the second phase of the project has also been completed. (With PTI inputs)