Navi Mumbai: While the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) failed to run the Monorail successfully in Mumbai, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has planned at least one Monorail route in the satellite city in the years to come. The civic body also made a provision of Rs 2 crore in the budget for the financial year 2020-21.
The budget for 2020-21, that received the general body’s nod on Wednesday evening, made a provision of Rs 2 crore for survey and preparation of a detailed plan for Monorail in the city.
Jaywant Sutar, the mayor of Navi Mumbai said that the Monorail will make commuting easy within the city. However, he could not give much details of the project and failed to justify the Monorail’s advantage over the Metro, which is successful both in Mumbai and Delhi. He gave a weird reason that the Monorail takes less space as it hangs above and does not affect traffic.
Mumbai’s Monorail, which is operated by MMRDA, received flak for its poor services. Even today, the frequency is very less and people hardly use the mode of transport. Against a promise to be available at a 4.5-minute frequency, officially it is available at 22-minute frequency. Most of the time, services are truncated midway due to technical failure in the 19.5-km stretch from Chembur to Mahalaxmi or commuters have a long waiting time.
On March 3, the Mumbai Monorail completed one year of its operation and just 10 per cent of its capacity was utilised. Only 38 lakh passengers used it in the last one year, while there was an estimate of 3.6 crore commuters a year, when it was planned.
Meanwhile, the general body of NMMC approved a Rs 1.09 crore surplus budget without many hiccups.
“The budget saw an increase of Rs 450 crore as a number of development works were included after discussion,” said Sutar. He added the total budget for 2020-21 is Rs 4,598.91 crore, which is around 25 per cent more than the previous year.
