Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ ‘ Make in Maharashtra ’ initiative will soon be woven into the Metro rail project. The Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation (Maha Metro) — a 50:50 joint venture between the Centre and State — will set up a rolling stock manufacturing facility near Nagpur. It will rope in global players such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Alstom in the development of the proposed unit, with initial annual capacity of 100 coaches.
The body will soon request the state government to provide 100 acres of land near Nagpur and it will spend Rs 350 crore on construction of the unit, which will be functional in a year. Coaches will be supplied to all metro projects undertaken in Nagpur, Pune and the rest of the nation.
Additionally, the proposed unit will conduct periodical overhaul of more than 2,500 coaches running in various projects across the country. “This is a critical requirement of the metro project development,” said Maha Metro managing director Brijesh Dixit.
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“Currently, metro projects are underway in 13 cities, which will go up to 50 cities in the future. The proposed manufacturing unit will meet the requirement of upcoming projects and thereby boost the Make in Maharashtra and Make in India initiative.”
As far as the Nagpur Metro rail is concerned, the 41.7 km project with over 42 stations entails an investment of Rs 8,680 crore. As of April 30, the project is 61.53 per cent complete.
The Pune Metro rail covers 31.25 km with over 30 stations and its estimated cost is Rs 11,420 crore. In addition, Maha Metro is currently engaged in the preparation of detailed project reports for Nagpur Metro phase II, Pune Metro phase II and Thane Metro.
The changes were not welcomed by all but will seep into the regular in a few months down the road. Such social disapproval is also faced by the Nagpur metro project. Recently there has been a lot of fuss about whether Nagpur needs a metro or not. The discussions over metro rail have taken peaks in recent times because people are frustrated of the inconvenience the development of the project is causing in daily traffic. Trucks loaded with heave materials blocking the road, people waiting for hours for the road to get cleared, heavy machineries drilling into the ground and creating irritating noises the whole day long have made people angry and sceptical about the Project .The development of this project has also caused a lot of dust on roads, air pollution and in some cases people have even lost their business.
generate revenues around 5200cr (aprox). Project is expected to add around 12 million people to the city’s population by means of direct or indirect employment and with this growing economic activity its necessary to plan the infrastructure development so as to support the growth of the city. In addition to the above invested mind boggling figures the vehicle ownership of the city is 84% which leads to traffic congestion in peak hours and hence, the travel time of the commuter increases significantly. This astonishing number of ownership means that much strain on the already scarce fossil fuels.
