Mumbai Metro may open to public after mid-May

Although no date has been decided or announced to open the 11.4km-long Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Mumbai Metro rail corridor for public, top officials have said that the route can be opened after a week of getting the safety certificate.

Talking to the media on Tuesday, Abhay Kumar Mishra, chief executive officer of Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL), informed that last of the statutory certification inspection for the project has got completed.

MMOPL is the consortium that constructed the first metro line and will also operate it.

“We will start the metro corridor after seven days from getting the safety certification,” said Mishra.

According to Mishra, the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety (CMRS), has completed the physical inspection between April 18 and April 26 and now he is scrutinising the documents submitted. Therefore, it is likely that Mumbai’s first metro line will be opened any day after mid-May.

The metro, once open for public use, is expected to cater to more than one lakh passengers daily between 5.30am and midnight.

During peak hours, the headway or frequency of the metro will be four minutes as compared to 8-10 minutes during non-peak hours. Around 200 services will be run daily.

In all, there are 16 metro trains with the MMOPL — 14 of them will be put into use during rush hour to ferry commuters and one each will kept as operation standby and maintenance standby. During non-peak hours, seven to eight trains will ply between Versova and Ghatkopar.

Each metro rake comprises four coaches, with each of them having maximum capacity of 375 passengers.

The project cost now stands at Rs4,321 crore.