Water crisis hits sparsely used monorail, bottled water ordered

MMRDA requires 7L litres of non-drinking and 30,000 ltr drinking water each month; floats tender to curb scarcity

Mumbai The acute water scarcity in the city has affected even the sparsely used monorail on the Jacob Circle-Wadala-Chembur corridor, prompting the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to invite tenders for 1,500 packaged drinking water bottles of 20 litres each for 12 months. According to sources in MMRDA, the water will predominantly cater to monorail stations and their maintenance depot in Wadala.

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Apart from the packaged drinking water, MMRDA hopes to bag another contractor who will be able to arrange 70 water tankers (each with a 10,000-litre capacity) for one year, which will help service the washrooms, restrooms and also the primary cleaning of rakes.

Every month, MMRDA requires seven lakh litres of non-drinking and 30,000 litres of drinking water. According to officials, the ongoing water crisis has hit the Wadala depot hardest, where the staff work and maintain the monorail rakes. “We are hoping that we will be able to get a contractor by the end of the month,” said an MMRDA official.

While the staff carries bottled water to combat the crisis, a similar option is unavailable to passengers. “I have hardly ever seen water available at the station. Considering the wait time of at least 18 minutes between each train, something needs to be done about the water availability,” said A Kamble, a Wadala resident who uses monorail frequently.

HT’s questionnaire to the MMRDA spokesperson on the plans to mitigate water crises at their monorail network remained unanswered.

Monorail carries an average of 16,000 people on weekdays and 10,000 on weekends. The growth in passenger ridership has been very slow. In 2022-23, 36.36 lakh commuters have used the service and generated ₹7.04 crore, which is the highest in the last six years.

In 2021-22 the monorail carried 12.56 lakh passengers and earned ₹2.67 crore while in 2019-20 35.81 lakh passengers travelled, earning MMRDA ₹6.99 crore.

The numbers are nowhere near the 61.66 lakh passengers registered in 2015-16. Currently, the monorail makes 118 trips.

With the monorail ridership increasing gradually, MMRDA is planning to deploy an additional 10 rakes. The prototype rake is expected by October, following which every three months a new rake will arrive. The inclusion of the new rakes will improve the frequency from 18 minutes to five minutes is likely to nearly double the total number of services to 250 each day.