Come November, Mumbai will see the first commercial trial run of India’s first monorail between Chem-bur and Wadala. The monorail will be opened to public early next year.
“Work on Phase-I of the monorail is progressing as per schedule prepared and the trial run should take place after a month,” confirmed Rahul Asthana, MMRDA metropolitan commissioner.
Mr Asthana said that the date of the commercial trials has not been finalised, however, it will happen sometime in the month of November.
Till date, the authorities have been conducting technical trial runs between Wadala Car Depot and Bhakti Park station. These runs had started in February this year.
The commercial trials would include testing the duration of the journey from Wadala to Chembur, monorail’s optimum speed, maximum carrying capacity etc.
According to the agencies involved in the construction of the monorail and the MMRDA, the commercial run will be held between Wadala Car Depot and Chembur, which is a stretch of 8.9 kilometres.
After the contract for the first monorail was awarded on October 16, 2008, the construction work took off on February 25, 2009 and was originally scheduled to get over by December 2010. However, the deadline has been revised four times till now.
Going by the latest deadline set up by the MMRDA, the first phase is likely to be completed by December 2012. The second phase between Wadala and Jacob Circle is scheduled to be completed by December 2013.