India's first Monorail launched in Mumbai

The much-anticipated Mumbai Monorail - the first in India - was inaugurated here on Saturday, with Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and several media persons climbing aboard the inaugural ride.

The 8.93-km-long Monorail, running between Chembur-Wadala in the east-south direction, comprising the first phase, will be open to the public from Sunday.

The second phase - connecting Wadala with Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk in south Mumbai, a distance of 19.17 km - will be completed by mid-2015, said officials of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

Costing a total Rs.3,000 crore, the fully-elevated Monorail has a minimum height of 5.5 metres and is higher in some sections.

The Rs.3,000 crore Monorail project is being implemented in two phases. The first phase comprises the 8.9 km long Wadala-Chembur section, which will be thrown open to the public on Sunday while in the second phase the services will be extended to Sant Gadge Maharaj Chowk in South Mumbai.
The Authority has fixed fares between Rs.5-18 for the first phase of operations.
MMRDA will operate six trains in the first phase, and another 10 will be added in the next phase.
To begin with, the services will operate with four coaches having a combined carrying capacity of 580 passengers at every 15 minutes.
MMRDA is planning to increase the frequency from 15 mins to every 4 mins.
The monorail project has been executed by a consortium of engineering major Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) and Malaysian firm Scomi Engineering and owned and operated by MMRDA.