In a city where every monsoon deluge lays bare, for the global investor to see, an inherited public transportation system tripping on traffic, 2007 will see a row of columns for the city’s first Metro Rail corridor. The first coaches won’t roll out until 2009, but along with the Bandra Worli Sea Link which will open in 2008, construction on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar line will be a sign of things to come.

For Mumbai’s commuters, whose collective contribution to the national income tax kitty jumped by over 50 per cent last year, the columns will bring relief, at long last, though not quite yet.

In the pipeline for nearly a decade — a study initiated in 1997 recommended a mass rapid transit system along this route as “potentially bankable and economically viable — the financial capital’s first Metro Rail will be India’s first public-private partnered mass rapid transit system. And building the country’s most expensive public transportation system, at nearly Rs 200 crore a kilometre, is a consortium led by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Energy Ltd and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

The Rs 650 crore viability gap funding for the Rs 2,356-cr project from the Union Ministry of Urban Development, stalled due to a technical problems, tenders had been invited before the assistance was sought may still come through. “We are hopeful,” said Chief Secretary, Government of Maharashtra, DK Sankaran. “We have explained to the MoUD that this project was conceived long before the VGF option was available.”

There are other hopeful signs: Six joint venture entities are in the reckoning to be project management consultants, all with global expertise on mass transit systems from Dublin to New York. REL officials say the keen interest in Mumbai Metro One, as the special purpose vehicle has been christened, is because this project is India’s first public-private partnered mass transport project of this magnitude, and therefore a benchmark for future public-private partnerships in urban Indian public transportation.

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