Open-air, not AC: simple look to monorail stops…..Prashant Rangnekar
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has asked Scomi, the company executing the monorail project along with Larsen & Toubro, to give the stations a simple, no-frills look, and focus instead on making them airy, well ventilated rather than air-conditioned.
The designs have been approved by the MMRDA. We were told to construct stations that would have a local, familiar look combined with a tinge of an international one, said Suhaimi Yacoob, Scomis country president.
Sources said MMRDA has also instructed the contractors to build open-air stations instead of air-conditioned ones to have more ventilation. This would also reduce cost and make maintenance easier.
The stations will be 72 to 75 m long, enough to accommodate a six-coach train though the present plan involves only four coaches, and 70 metres wide to accommodate the guideway beams in both directions. The stations will come up in areas where traffic congestion is a problem and, in some cases, even on roads.
We will use lighter material wherever possible as most of these stations are coming up in highly congested areas, added Yacoob. The material used will be a combination of aluminum and steel, especially for columns. It will also have a lot of pre-finished materials; there is little space near the construction site to prepare the casts, Yacoob said.
Sources said 90 per cent of the piling work for pillars has been completed on the Chembur-Wadala stretch, but the stations are yet to be built. Most of the digging work for the station has to be done before the monsoon. Instructions have been given not to do any digging and piling work during the monsoon and complete it before June as there should be no scope of complaint for the authorities (the BMC), said an MMRDA official. Last year, the MMRDA and the BMC locked horns over the continuing Metro rail work.
The MMRDA is building the first 20-km monorail corridor from Chembur to Jacob Circle via Wadala. The first link from Chembur to Wadala is to be commissioned by December 2010 and the second link from Wadala to Jacob Circle by April 2011.