Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said here on Tuesday that the Centre would soon consider a proposal to extend Mumbai Metro rail services to Thane, a satellite city of Mumbai.
Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Mumbai Metro-3 project at Marol in north Mumbai, Naidu said that for a financial capital like Mumbai, Metro was the need of the hour. "We intend to extend the Mumbai metro services to Thane in the next phase," he said.
Underscoring the need for the Centre and states working together to provide better infrastructure for the people, Naidu said: "Politics should be limited to the election period and the governments at the Centre and states should work as 'team India' for the development of the nation".
Naidu also announced that the Centre would accord a formal approval to the Pune Metro in the coming days. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that the Mumbai Metro-3 was among the most expensive metro projects taken up so far in the country.
Chavan said that since Mumbai's city geography did not permit laying of a surface metro track, the entire phase III project had to be planned as an underground metro.
The 32.5 km-long Mumbai Metro-3, which is the second mega project on the metro network, will connect major central business districts of Nariman Point and Bandra-Kurla Complex, domestic and international airport and industrial areas of MIDC and SEEPZ. It will also link various areas in the island city that are not currently served by suburban railways like Kalbadevi, Worli, Prabhadevi, airport area and Andheri (E).
To be executed on EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) basis, the Metro-3 line will have 27 stations - of which 26 will be underground and one at Aarey Colony, Goregaon, on the ground level.
The Mumbai Metro-3 is expected to carry 39,000 commuters an hour per direction (13.9 lakh commuters daily) in 2021 and 42,000 commuters an hour per direction (17 lakh commuters daily) in the year 2031.
Among other things, the Metro-3 will have all the other usual features like fully air-conditioned coaches, automatic fare collection, escalators for entry and exit, two level concourse and platforms.
Estimated to cost Rs 23,136 crore, the Mumbai Metro receives 57.20 per cent (Rs 13235 crore) funding from Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA). The Government of India and Government of Maharashtra through MMRDA will bear the rest of the cost. The Centre will provide 50 per cent of Central taxes as sub-debt while the balance 50 per cent shall be borne by the State Government.