Mumbai: Finally after a delay of eight long years, Mumbaikars can now travel in the much awaited monorail phase-2 (Jacob Circle–Wadala) from Monday onwards. Commuters can use the entire monorail service comprising of 19.5 kilometres (Jacob Circle-Wadala-Chembur) from 6am till 10pm. The monorail services will be operated at a frequency of twenty-two minutes each and the ticket fare will be between Rs 10 to Rs 40.
Chief Minister (CM) Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated the phase-2 comprising of 11.5 km on Sunday evening. During the event, he announced that the monorail will be made integrated and connected to other transport modes including railways and metro corridors to make it sustainable.
CM said, “Private vehicles create pollution, therefore, more emphasis will be given on the public transport. My aim is to bring mobility. By doing so the city traffic can reduce and also the burden from the existing local trains can decrease.
Therefore, we plan to connect monorail with the suburban railways and upcoming metro lines.” Meanwhile Fadnavis also remarked the phase 1 (Wadala-Chembur) was being used by 4.5 lakh people. But, as the entire stretch has been started now, around 30 lakh ridership is expected everyday.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is now planning to connect ten monorail stations with skywalks, foot over bridges (FOBs) and subways so it can be easily accessible to the existing suburban railway stations and upcoming metro corridors. Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, also present at the inauguration event, asserted that his department is ready to co-operate with the MMRDA to make monorail successful.
According to the MMRDA’s station interchange plan, the Jacob Circle (Sant Ghadge Maharaj) station will be connected to Mahalaxmi Railway Station (Western Suburbs) and Metro Line 3 (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz) Mahalaxmi Station. Similarly, the Lower Parel, Mint Colony, Dadar East, Wadala bridge and Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) monorail stations will be connected with the existing Lower Parel, Curry Road, Dadar, Wadala and GTB Railway Stations.
Furthermore, the Wadala Depot, Bhakti Park, VNP Marg Junction and Chembur monorail stations will be connected with Anik Bus Depot, Metro Line 4 (Wadala-Kasarvadavli), Metro Line 2B (DN Nagar-Mandale) and Chembur Railway Station. As per MMRDA, on the 19.5 km long monorail track, four air conditioned coaches will be running. The train will have carrying capacity of 568 passengers at a time. It will take 44 minutes to travel on the entire stretch.