With two committees offering different viewpoints on the appropriate plot for the contentious Metro 3 (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz) car shed, a third panel has been appointed by the State Government to take a final call on the plots at Aarey and Kanjurmarg. The committee was appointed on Jan 6, 2021.
A senior State Government official said, “The earlier reports did not consider the fact that the Aarey plot would prove to be insufficient in the coming years. Therefore, the committee has been asked to study Aarey and also look at Kanjurmarg’s feasibility as an integrated car shed for Metro-3, 4 (Wadala-Kasarvadavali) and 6 (Swami Samarth Nagar to Vikhroli), which was also not considered before.”
Read - Panel To Re-Examine Kanjurmarg And Other Sites For Metro Car Shed
Though the government had previously said that it is considering a plot at Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), the terms of reference provided to the committee have no mention of this particular plot.
A committee appointed in 2015 by then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had recommended the construction of an integrated car shed for Metro 3 and Metro 6 at Kanjurmarg. The committee at the time had said the Kanjurmarg option was preferential when combined with Metro 6.
“Both the lines, when developed as one system, can share the same depot facilities at Kanjurmarg and operationally complement each other,” the report said. It went on to recommend a double-decker depot at Aarey if the Kanjurmarg plot was unavailable and added that this “option entails a substantially smaller impact of only 446 trees and the depot area is also reduced to 20.82 hectares instead of the present 30 hectares.”
Also read - MMRDA Says Kanjurmarg Metro Car Shed Could Save More Than ₹4,650 Crores
When Uddhav Thackeray took over as the Chief Minister of the state in late 2019, he stayed the construction at Aarey while appointing another committee under Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) Manoj Saunik. However, the panel came back with the recommendation that Aarey would be the most suitable option from a financial and ecological perspective.
“There is no alternative site available for the car shed for line 3 which could be selected which would be environmentally suitable and available at reasonable cost,” the panel had said in January 2020. The committee went on to say that the state should allow the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) to proceed with the construction of the car shed at Aarey while also urging them to expedite the work to make up for the time lost due to litigation.
The same committee had also studied the Kanjurmarg option, though it maintained that shifting the car shed here would bear operational, technical, and financial consequences. The report further said that the “shifting of depot would not address the requirements of line 3 and would also hamper the frequency of operations of both lines 3 and line 6.”
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