Work has started on India's first Mass Rapid Transit System being implemented on the public private partnership mode Mumbai's infrastructure may be falling apart through municipal neglect and the city may have already been bartered away to builders, but none can dispute that its administrators are short of ambitious plans for its development. While an underground walkway across one single intersection at the downtown Metro cinema caused five years of havoc for residents and passersby, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (mmrda) has planned a 146 km-long rail-based Mass Rapid Transit System (mrts) it hopes will cut across the entire city by 2021. The cost of this three-phase project, billed Mumbai Metro, is tentatively put at Rsl9,525 crore. It will provide trans-city connectivity by mrts corridors envisaged to link Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar, Colaba-Bandra-Charkop, Bandra-Kurla-Mankhurd, Charkop-Dahisar, Ghatkopar Mulund, bkc (Bandra-Kurla Complex)-Kanjur Marg, Andheri (east)-Dahisar (east), Hutatma Chowk-Ghatkopar and Sewri-Prabhadevi. Civil construction of the first Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar segment began recently, designed to link coastal Versova with the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar via Andheri where the city airport too is located. To be built at a cost of Rs2,356 crore, with a Viability Gap Fund (vgf) of Rs650 crore from the Maharashtra government, this corridor is scheduled for commissioning on 31 July 2010. The air-conditioned trains with automatic doors that will carry the initially projected six lakh daily commuters will be able to traverse the 11.4 km route in 21 minutes as against the present 90 minutes by road. This as well as the other corridors are expected to ease the city's vehicular traffic and, in turn, its automobile pollution. A special purpose vehicle called Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (mmopl) has been formed by Reliance Energy Ltd, mmrda, designated the project implementation agency, and France's Veolia Transport to execute this corridor. Incorporated in December 2006, Mumbai Metro One is the country's first mrts project implemented on the public private partnership (ppp) format. The government's State Support Agreement with mmopl, signed in April 2007, assures assistance on securing permits, consents and clearances for the project. Prolonged planning mmopl director K.P. Maheshwari says the project is well ahead of the 60-month schedule specified in the concession period. "Before the public could see actual action on ground, we had to do our homework right, since this corridor is one of the busiest routes of the city to work on," he explains. "It is to be appreciated that such large and complex projects require one-and-half to two years to plan." Construction commenced on the available 7.7 km stretch along the alignment within 11 months of the concession agreement being signed, in March 2007, despite the delay in handing over the DN Nagar land for the depot and a clear Right Of Way (row) for the entire stretch of 11.4 km. Despite this delay and the steep price increase in almost all production factors, mmopl has kept the project cost from escalating, he adds. Capital cost accounts for 80 per cent of the project cost, but the debt proportion will be decided by the debt servicing ability of the project and following discussions with prospective lenders. Kolkata-based Simplex Infrastructure Ltd has been given the civil contract for construction and viaduct, while sew construction Ltd, of Hyderabad, secured the civil contract for all 12 stations. Besides, pb systra are the project consultants and mva systra India Pvt Ltd the traffic management consultants. Reliance Energy has submitted its bid for the second corridor - Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd - of the Metro Project and has been shortlisted for the second phase of the bidding process with six other consortia. But Maheshwari maintains that the company enjoys no first right of refusal in the bidding as every line of the Metro Project is a new project, independent of the outcome of the bidding process for the first line. "If the government decides to go ahead with the ppp model for the other lines of the Metro Project, we would consider participating in the bidding process," he points out. "Each bid would, however, be evaluated on its own merit and the final decision can only be taken after such due-diligence."