Mumbai Metro: An answer to commuting woes?

NEW ORDER: The Metro will drastically change the way for Mumbaikars traveling in buses and trains.

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Keywords: Metro, Civic Issues

Mumbai: Mumbai’s local trains will soon have a competitor.

The much-awaited Metro may be an answer to the city’s urban transport commuting woes.

A resident of Mumbai, Sangeeta Som is all set to go to work, but work means a daily 20-km toil. From Thane, the northern corner of Mumbai’s outskirts to stations beyond, her battle lasts for 50 minutes each day.

"If the Metro comes, I might be able to travel that much in five minutes,” says Sangeeta.

The three-phase Metro rail will snake across 40 km on the 14 km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar route connecting Colaba-Mahim-Charkop in Phase two

It will also add a crucial link between Mahim-Bandra Kurla-Mankhurd on the eastern suburbs.

The Metro will drastically change the way half a million Mumbaikars travel from the daily grime of packed trains and buses to a swift, silent, air-conditioned mode of transport.

To run on elevated platforms cutting through dense traffic, Metro is a joint venture of Anil Ambani's Reliance and the Mumbai Metropolitan Authority.

The Rs 20,000 crore project is India's most expensive mass transit system, a breather, finally, for more than six million people who brave perhaps the country's worst urban transportation system.

"Metro will be comfortable, from 90 minutes to 21 minutes,” says director, Metro One, K P Maheshwari.

And Mumbai has Delhi showing the way where a 60 km Metro network is almost complete in record time. But it's not going to be easy.

"Delhi is circular and has wider roads, but Mumbai is congested and longitudinal,” says Maheshwari.

But Mumbai is the maximum city because it untiringly rises to challenges.

With civil work on line one already in progress, authorities are optimistic Mumbaikars could get to ride the Metro in 2011.