First trial run of Mumbai Metro today

After almost a decade of planning, Mumbai’s Metro will conduct its first trial run on Wednesday. HT reports.

After almost a decade of planning, Mumbai’s Metro will conduct its first trial run on Wednesday.

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The inaugural run will be flagged off by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, and will begin from Versova station and run a two-kilometre stretch to Azad Nagar metro station at Andheri.

This is part of the first phase of the 11.4 kilometres on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar (VAG) corridor, which is expected to take off by August 15, after all the necessary trial runs.

The entire corridor, up to Ghatkopar, is expected to take off by December 2013. “Currently, we will hold trial runs for a couple of weeks. Only after we receive a safety certificate from the commissioner of railway safety will we be allowed to start full-fledged operations,” said a senior official of the MMRDA, the nodal agency for the mega infrastructure project.

The commissioner of railways conducts checks related to operation, maintenance, traction and signaling systems before issuing a certificate.

The project has missed its original deadline of December 2010, the Congress, which will face both central and state elections next year, has been pushing for the project to take off soon.