Big blow for Mumbai, Metro rollout delayed, here is why

Despite smooth progress on civil works at two Metro corridors, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) revised its deadline from 2019 to 2020. The authority cited deadlock over procuring coaches for the Dahisar-DN Nagar Metro-2A and Andheri East-Dahisar East Metro -7 corridor as the primary reason behind revising the deadline.

The deadlock over procurement of the coaches lasted for almost one year because the financing bank for the two Metro projects — the Asian Development Bank (ADB) — wanted MMRDA to strike out a condition stating 75 per cent of the Metro coaches will be made in India.

An MMRDA official said, “We lost almost one year in working this out. We have taken down the condition. However, once we complete the bidding process over the next six months, it will take a minimum of 14 months for any manufacturer to provide enough coaches to start the operations.”

The MMRDA official added, “We can expect the manufacturer to deliver the coaches by the end of 2019. Then we will have to run the Metro empty for at least six months to get a safety clearance from the Commissioner of Railway (CRS). So we assume that by mid-2020, Metro-2A and Metro-7 would be ready for operations.”

“We hope to complete civil works before 2019 monsoon,” added the MMRDA official.

Source: DNA