MUMBAI: India began building a multi-billion dollar city rail project for Mumbai on Wednesday, hoping to shore up creaky infrastructure in the nation’s financial capital and help it compete with global hubs.
The “Metro,” which will start service in 2009 and is scheduled to be completed by 2031, would ease some of the strain on a crowded suburban railroad network and chock-a-block roads that together serve 11 million people each day, authorities said.
“When this is completed in phases, I am confident that it will make Mumbai a more livable city, a better connected city,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after laying the foundation-stone for the $4.25 billion project.
“I... wish you well in your efforts in making Mumbai the capital of Asia,” he said.
The city, India’s largest and home to some of Asia’s most expensive real estate, is plagued by poor infrastructure and overcrowding of public transport as more and more job-seekers abandon the countryside to move to the city.
Mumbai is home to the country’s premier stock exchange, the BSE, and most large businesses. It is also the home of Bollywood, the throbbing Hindi language movie industry.
Mumbai’s suburban railway — the mainstay of transport — is a picture of jampacked round-the-clock crowds. Each nine-car train carries some 5,000 passengers during peak hours, nearly three times the official capacity, with some even travelling on the roof.
Road travel is painfully slow and can be impossible during the monsoon — typically June to October — because of waist-deep flooding.
The partly-elevated Metro project is set to open its first phase in 2009 and the last in 2031. The first service is expected to connect a east-west corridor spanning 15 km.
The fully-completed service is expected to serve 1.1 million passengers each day.
In 2003, Indian authorities declared their intention to transform Mumbai into another Shanghai, but the grandiose plan was ridiculed after a cloudburst last year killed hundreds and exposed the city’s lack of emergency planning.
Soon after, billions of dollars were sanctioned to transform Mumbai into a first-world city with radical improvement in transport, housing and sanitation.
“Our cities can not develop in the manner in which they have over the past few decades. We are committing $11 billion over the next five years for urban renewal,” Singh said.
“Prosperity and progress radiate from urban hubs into the rest of the country.”—Reuters
