Mumbai Metro and Mumbai

Mumbai Metro and the the city that never sleeps.

Ms Ashwini Bhide, MD, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC), who is featured today in the front page of Times of India, inaugurated the “Making of Mumbai Metro - 3” and “Scientific Antiquities” exhibitions and delivered an overwhelming lecture on the Metro line 3 in front of a packed auditorium with nearly 300 people in attendance, at the Nehru Science Centre, on the 11th of May, 2018, to commemorate the National Technology Day.

Mumbai suburban Rail transport (central, western and harbour line) is inextricably linked to the life of most Mumbaikars. Every single day millions of people use suburban rail transport to commute in Mumbai. Although, daily, more than 2000 plus train services in Mumbai are commissioned to hurtle through the city, carrying millions of Mumbaikars to their destinations, yet the ever increasing population and unending migration of people to the Mumbai metropolis is making it extremely difficult and often times dangerous for people to commute by suburban rail. Most rail commuters in Mumbai, specially during the peak hours, are confronted with every day challenge of searching for foot-space in a train that does not even have an additional square inch of space left. Realising this hard fact, the civic infrastructure planners have long been struggling with solutions and have firmly believed that the time has truly come for ‘the lifeline’ of Mumbai to now change to Metro (rail based Mass Rapid Transit System).

Accordingly the Government of Maharashtra, taking on board all stakeholders, has committed to implementing the ‘Metro Rail Projects’ to improve traffic & transportation scenario in Mumbai Metropolitan Region(MMR) and has entrusted this task to the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), with the Chief Minister as it’s Chairman, to implement its vision. The ambitious Metro Rail Master Plan includes 9 corridors covering a length of 146.5 k.m., out of which 32.5 k.m was proposed underground and rest elevated. One of the most challenging corridors in this master plan that employs the best of technology, is the Metro 3 project. We at the Nehru Science Centre had the honour not only to host an exhibition, which briefly presents the making of this challenging metro line but also were privileged that the MD of MMRC entrusted with this mammoth task, Ms Ashwini Bhide, was personally there to open this exhibition and to deliver an outstandingly informative and fear allaying lecture on this project. This exhibition and the commemorative lecture, we feel, was the most befitting manner in which we could celebrate this year’s National Technology Day at the Nehru Science Centre.

The exhibition, provides a glimpse into the technological marvels that are used in the making of the The Metro-3 corridor. This metro corridor is a fully underground line connecting south Mumbai to the city’s western suburbs. The 33.5 kilometres long line will have 27 stations and is expected to be operational by 2021. Ms Bhide spoke on the technological challenges involved in the project while honestly touching upon some societal issues including displacement of people and also uprooting of several trees. She was honest about the sound pollution and such other medium term problems that the project will create but was unequivocal in stressing that they are most concerned about these issues and are doing all that is possible to mitigate the hardships. She listed out details of the rehabilitation plans and also the plans for plantation of innumerable number of trees in lieu of the ones which were mandatorily required to be uprooted. She informed the audience that they have achieved an important mile stone of completing more than 2kms of tunneling in a short span. She spoke on how the MMRC is using Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) at various launching shafts for tunnel construction and added that the metro line 3 has so far received eleven TBMs, out of which eight have been lowered and have started main drives. Ms. Bhide further said, that 15 TBMs have already completed Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) and that they are hopeful that they will have all the 17 TBMs running by July 2018.

The presentation was richly illustrated with site photos and artistic visuals of how the system would look like when completed. She addressed concerns of public in terms of environmental issues, mobile connectivity, security concerns, evacuation plans in times of emergency etc. With full-scale operations of MML-3, the city would witness significant reduction in traffic volumes and the local transit facility would get a boost. She added, the MML-3 would bring multiple benefits such as comfortable Air conditioned travel for more than 16 lakh commuters daily, reduction in travel time, reduction in air & noise pollution, improving safety & security of the citizens etc. Upon completion, this fully underground corridor with 27 stations would connect Six business districts, 30 educational institutes, 30 recreational facilities and domestic as well as international airport terminals.

Metro transport has revolutionised public transport in most parts of the world including the city of Delhi, which now boasts of an advanced metro rail system.

As per the data available from the Advancing Public Transport (UITP) site, which provides the statistics of the world metro figures, as of April 2014, there were 168 metro system in 55 countries. The site further states that the last 15 years have seen a considerable expansion in terms of metro systems and infrastructure globally. It adds that a total of 194 metro lines (both existing and new networks) accounting for approximately 40% of the length of metro infrastructure worldwide, have been opened in this period. It goes on to add that in 2014 alone, 513 km of new metro infrastructure and 355 new metro stations were put into service. Among the new metro systems that were inaugurated in this period, Mumbai is one of them and the others include ; Salvador (Brazil), Changsha, Ningbo and Wuxi (China), Shiraz (Iran) and Panama City (Panama). The Mumbai Metro 1 (Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar) corridor was opened to commuter traffic in June 2014. It has now emerged as the most hassle free transportation mode and its ridership per weekday jumped to 3.55 lakh commuters in 2017, up from 2.96 lakh in February 2016.

The Metro Transport is one of the most preferred transport in the world with several densely populated cities adopting this means of transport. The busiest metro network in the world is Tokyo, which boasts close to 3.6 billion passenger journeys per year. Chinese metro systems, have experienced even more significant passenger growth, with Beijing (+39%) and Shanghai (+25%) rising to 2nd and 3rd busiest networks. Taken together, metro systems in Asia carry over 80 million passengers per day, nearly half the world total passengers and with most Indian cities preferring this mode of transport this number is only heading north words.

This year’s National Technology Day was truly memorable for us. We opened the Machined to Think Gallery (opened by Dr Anil Kakodkar), organised the OCSC valedictory event of the International Astronomy Olympiad, opened the Making of Metro line 3 and the scientific antiquities exhibition to commemorate this important day. We firmly believe that Applied science or Engineering or Technology has been central to human ingenuity. From the dim millennium of prehistory, ever since woman became the tool maker, she has applied her mind in developing technology, which has been central to the primacy of human evolution that plays a pivotal role in benefiting human society. Technology continues to be one of the key drivers for empowering individuals, societies and countries. Therefore we must owe our debt to Atal ji who recognised the importance of technology, in the growth of our nation, and declared 11th of May, back in 1998, to be celebrated as the National Technology Day.