Chembur-Wadala monorail test drive in November

The monorail project may not meet its commissioning deadline of January 2013 deadline due to delays in completion of work on stations, but trial runs on its 8.922-km-long stretch from Chembur to Wadala will begin from November.

“We will start the complete trial runs from end-to-end in November,” said Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) commissioner Rahul Asthana. He added that while work on the viaduct would be completed by November, “stations… would take a little more time.”

The 19.29km-long monorail route, the first such in India, will run from Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk (Jacob Circle) to Wadala and Chembur. The 8.922km-long first phase from Wadala to Chembur was expected to be complete by January next year.

“January is a tough call, primarily because at some stations, we had no right of way for escalators and linkways. Finally, we have sorted out the matter,” said Asthana. The 10.368km-long second phase, from Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk to Wadala, is planned to be commissioned a year after the first arm is operationalised.

The Jacob Circle-Wadala-Chembur route will be the first in the country and the second longest in the world after the Osaka monorail corridor in Japan, which is 23.8km-long. A monorail with four cars will have a capacity to ferry 562 passengers, while one with six cars will be able to accommodate 852 commuters.

The MMRDA had initially drawn up a master plan to add around 185km of monorail routes in the Mumbai metropolitan region in two phases — one 121.44km-long with six routes and another 63.22km-long with three routes. But, the authority has now decided to put on hold all future plans for the expansion of the monorail till the first route is commissioned and put into operation.