Even as work on the long-delayed Navi Mumbai international airport project has gathered pace, the Navi Mumbai Metro project that was initially scheduled to be ready by 2014, has been further delayed to December 2018.
The project has been thrown off schedule again as CIDCO has terminated the services of a contractor in building six of the eleven stations in the Metro’s first line between Belapur and Pendhar. The contract to construct these stations at a cost of ₹321 crore was awarded to a consortium of M/S Sanjose-Mahavir-Supreme, but has been terminated due to the slow progress, a CIDCO official said.
“The work on six stations, which is 62% complete, is now being looked after by M/S Prakash Constrowell Limited, while the tendering process for the remaining five stations is on,” said the official.
“Our target now is to run the first trial on the Belapur-Pendhar route by December 2018, and open it to the public by May 2019. This time, we will meet the target,” he said.
The 21.45-km-long Metro project in Navi Mumbai consists of four proposed lines. Work on the project started in 2011. The first line expected to open in May 2019 is the 11.10-km Belapur-Pendhar line, with a proposed outlay of ₹3,063 crore.
On this route, 96% of the viaduct construction worth ₹305 crore has been completed, and work on railway crossings worth ₹70 crore is under way. As much as 93% of the Metro depot, being built at a cost of ₹132 crore, is complete and train coaches are expected to arrive soon.
Mohan Ninawe, CIDCO’s public relations officer, said, “In July 2017, a team of CIDCO officials had visited the CRRC Factory at Zhuzhou in China and carried out pre-departure inspection of rolling stock. On the factory test track, trial runs were conducted successfully after which the first train set of three coaches have been accepted for departure from the factory in China. We are yet to decide the date and once we do, the coaches will reach shortly.”
After the completion of the first line, its extension of Line 3 will be undertaken on a cost sharing basis between CIDCO and Taloja MIDC. The second line will traverse the 7.12-km distance between Khandeshwar and Taloja MIDC. The third is a 3.87-km-long corridor joining the first two lines with three stations, and the final line consists of a 4.17-km corridor from Khandeshwar to the proposed Navi Mumbai international airport.
