MMRDA Plans New Andheri-Dahisar Line in Mumbai

In Mumbai, while work hasn’t even started on Line 2 (Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd) or Line 3 (Colaba-BKC-SEEPZ), the MMRDA tasked the Delhi Metro Rail Corp (DMRC) to prepare the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for a new Metro line from Andheri to Dahisar. The DPR is now ready and will be presented to an MMRDA committee today (August 20). This 16.5 km line is estimated to cost Rs 5,757 crore and will run entirely on the Western Express Highway (NH-8 within Mumbai).

Western Express Highway – photo: Wikimedia, used under Creative Commons License (By 2.0)

The Western Express Highway is the busiest arterial route in the city and as per the DPR, there will be 16 stations on the corridor, each roughly 1 km away from each other. The Depot is planned to come up on a 63-acre plot belonging to the Airports Authority of India which is currently frequented by drug addicts and prostitutes, ha!

This line will be entirely elevated and the project will be executed on the Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) model, just like Line 3. To finance its construction, the MMRDA will be approaching foreign lenders like World Bank, JICA and ADB soon.

– TMRG