China’s CRRC Corporation Ltd, BYD, and PSU major BHEL have expressed interest in supplying monorail train sets for Mumbai. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, which operates the single route monorail, is in the process of adding ten new rolling stock trains to boost capacity.

“Tender to procure new monorail trains were floated in March, 2019 and the financial opening is scheduled for May. CRRC, BYD and BHEL have attended the pre-bid meeting and shown interest,” said an MMRDA spokesperson.

After being relaunched in March 2019, only four monorail trains are running now and three more will start operations. Passengers have been complaining about less frequency and more waiting time. MMRDA operates the monorail on a single route connecting Jacob Circle-Wadala-Chembur .

“The whole project is in a sorry state with hardly a third of its original rolling stock being available. It has become unreliable from the service perspective,” said Sudhir Badami, a transportation analyst.

”Monorails were inaugurated in 2014. Since inception, it has been facing technical glitches as well as power outrages. In 2017, fire broke out in two coaches and the services were suspended. It was relaunched in 2019, and then also with only four operational trains,” he added.

“Adding to the woes, the original cost of the contract of supplying the system, including construction, was around ₹123 crore/km while actual cost has come to somewhere ₹150 crore/km,” Badami said.

When asked why monorail has failed to achieve ridership targets, the MMRDA spokesperson said, “1500 passengers per hour per direction is the design capacity of the monorail with minimum 15 in place. At present, the average daily ridership is 18,000 for March.”

(The writer is an intern with BusinessLine)

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