If government honchos are to be trusted, Mumbai will indeed become the first city in India to have a monorail. However I am a little sceptical of the 2010 start date for the service.

The routes are

The estimated cost of the project, proposed on four separate routes is Rs 1800 crore. The first route covering 25 km is Malabar Hill- Gopalrao Deshmukh Marg-Haji Ali-Keshavrao Khade Marg-Jacob Circle-Sane Guruji Marg- S S Rao Marg-Dattaram Lad Marg-GD Ambedkar Marg-Wadala Marg-Wadala Truck Terminus-Antop Hill-Sion Hospital-Dharavi- Bandra Kurla Complex.

The second route is of 10 km is Chembur-Mahul-Gidwani Marg-Gowandi-Chembur. The Lokhandwala Complex-Oshiwara- Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road-Kanjur Marg (10 km) is the third route and Thane-Kalyan-Bhiwandi is fourth route (25 km).

“Monorail is very ideal for Mumbai’s congested areas as it will run on elevated tracks and the space consumed is just 8 to 10 km,” a senior transport planner from MMRDA, K Vijaya Lakshmi said. [link]

The capacity of the Monorail is more than 500 with four coaches attached and more than 700 with six coaches attached to it, she said.

A lot of planning and design needs to be done so that the monorail do not create localised problems. Points of entry, exit, commercial activities leading to them, etc will be the problem areas affecting the users once the monorail is launched.

Hopefully we will see stellar results.

What are your opinions on the routes though? Hopefully the routes will intersect with the train lines on W. Rly and C. Rly. Only then will it become a comprehensive mass transit network. Otherwise it will be more of the same chaos.