Hindustan
Times: Mumbai: Tuesday, 03 March 2020.
Exactly
a year after the Mumbai Monorail was inaugurated, it has been found that only
around 38 lakh commuters have used it just 10% of its estimated ridership of
3.60 crore. HT accessed the data between March 4, 2019, and February 11, 2019,
using the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
On
March 3, 2019, Maharashtra’s former chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, had inaugurated
phase-2 (between Chembur-Jacob Circle) of the monorail, post which operations
began the next day. At the time of inauguration, it was estimated that the
monorail will have a ridership of 30 lakh a month.
According
to the data, the highest ridership on the monorail has been in its inaugural
month, at 5.55 lakh. In January 2020, only 2.75 lakh people travelled on the
19.5-km corridor. The data revealed that the monorail, run by the Mumbai
Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), has earned ₹7.29 crore in a
year.
The
maximum earnings were recorded in March 2019 when the monorail generated a
revenue of ₹96.29 lakh. In January 2020, it earned ₹55.52 lakh.
RA
Rajeev, metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA said, “30 lakh ridership a month can
be achieved only when we have 10 rakes with a headway of five minutes. We
cannot achieve the desired ridership till we have the minimum number of rakes.”
Mumbai
Monorail has floated a global tender to procure 10 rakes. This is the second
bid by MMRDA for procuring 10 additional rakes for monorail. A tender floated
in 2019 was cancelled as the bidder asked for many deviations, MMRDA claimed.
AV
Shenoy, a transport expert from Mumbai Vikas Samiti, said that the new state
government must take some hard decisions on the project, which has turned into
a white elephant. He said, “The state government must appoint an expert
committee, which will assess the way forward with this project. The committee
must assess if this project should continue at all or if there are any
alternatives that can be looked at.”