Instead of having carrying capacity for 600 passengers and 100 vehicles for Mumbai-Alibaug roll-on-roll-off (Ro-Ro) vessels, the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) by relaxing norms has brought down the carrying capacity of passengers to minimum 400 passengers and 80 vehicles. This means that now lesser number of passengers and vehicles will be able to go at once from Gateway of India to Mandwa and back.
The MbPT had a month ago initiated the process of purchasing a vessel for RoRo of around Rs 40 crore in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), MMB and City Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) will jointly procure the vessel for RoRo services by chipping in Rs 10 crore each.
According to MbPT officials, it has brought down the carrying capacity as the potential bidders who are wanting to bid for the supply of the RoRo vessel had requested the change.
“We have made changes due to request of the bidders but this will not make any major difference considering we have said minimum 400 passengers, so one can also have 550. The traffic will get streamlined and divided once we get in more vessels, if the response of this single vessel is good enough,” a MbPT official said.
RoRo services is also expected to cut down distance for those travelling to Goa by road considering even vehicles can be transported from Mumbai to Mandwa. This will help those travelling to Alibaug, Goa and other places like Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg to reach much faster.
In October 2018, Gujarat got its RoRo services between Ghogha near Bhavnagar in Gujarat and Dahej near Bharuch in south west Gujarat due to which the distance of 360-km road distance between the two got reduced to 31-km via sea-route.
LATE BY A YEAR
Earlier, there was a legal tussle between MMB & RoRo operator. The MMB had plans to start the RoRo services in April 2018, but it was delayed by almost a year.
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