Mumbai: Metro 9 Line half ready; depot elusive

Mumbai: While the Mumbai Metro 9 Line is fast shaping up to cater to the rising population in the suburban Mira-Bhayandar, work on the much-needed car depot to park and maintain the coaches is far from the beginning.

The civil works of the 10.08 km project are 55% ready, however, the location on which the depot will be established has not been finalised. Initially, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) planned to construct it at Rai, Morva and Mudha villages that are ahead of Bhayandar.

Indecisiveness on part of state govt

Resistance from the locals made the authorities re-evaluate alternate locations, which are a few kilometres further. The MMRDA officials have made the site visits and claim that the initial locations are best suited to service the metro corridor. However, a final decision is to be taken by the Maharashtra government, who for political reasons are unable to decide on this issue.

MMRDA officials are also maintaining a tight lid on where the car depot will eventually come up.

The metro will have a three-tier engineering structure – a rail viaduct on the top, the station’s concourse or ticketing area in the middle and an elevated road. Below the elevated road, there is an existing at grade road.

The three-tier structure of having an elevated road or a flyover is getting constructed on the Mira-Bhayandar Road to cut down on increasing vehicular congestion on this arterial road. The flyover section will be 3 km long. There will be three flyovers that are being constructed, first at Hatkesh Junction to Silver Park, second between S K Stone and Kanakia Junction and third from Deepak Hospital towards Bhayandar station. 

One such multi-level structure is more than half ready at Meditiya Nagar Metro Station, which is 63.63% complete. The height of the station is 35 meters from the road level.

This corridor will have eight metro stations and will be linked with Dahisar East metro station of the recently inaugurated Metro lines 2A and 7. The second interchange station will be at Miragaon metro station connecting with Metro line 10 of Gaimukh to Shivaji Chowk or Kashimira.

“Integration with different transport systems in Mumbai is a challenging part as Mumbai never sleeps. Metro Line 9 will be the finest example of an integrated transport system in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. After the completion of metro projects the travel pattern in MMR will be much more robust, connected and sustainable,” said S V R Srinivas, Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA.