Juhu residents appoint IIT to study Metro Rail

Whatever the elite do, they do it in style. The upscale Juhu residents have given a whole new meaning to citizen-led initiative.

Not wanting the overground Metro Rail literally staring into their homes, they have been pitching for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to go underground for the 8-km stretch from Juhu to Linking Road.

Unlike the Pedder Road residents — another uber-rich community of Mumbai — resisting construction of a flyover there, the Juhu residents have decided to dig — not the underground Metro but into their pockets — to appoint their own consultants from the Indian Institute of Technology. It would cost the residents lakhs of rupees to get re-evaluated the feasibility of an underground alternative for the stretch, but they are not cagey about it.

This even after the MMRDA chief Ratnakar Gaikwad, who chaired a meeting with the residents, decided to form a core committee of residents with MMRDA officials on Wednesday to look into the techno-feasibility of the underground Metro Rail on the 8-km stretch. MMRDA has often insisted that an underground rail would cost at least Rs500 crore per km as compared to an overground one.

The core committee comprised architects PK Das, Nitin Killawala, Ashok Datar, Sherley Singh, Ranjana Barve and Tikamdas Kukreja, in conjunction with MMRDA which will review into the technical viability of the underground Metro line.