For 6.9 million people daily commuting on Mumbai’s suburban rail network in Super Dense Crush conditions (17 passengers occupying one square foot of area), the idea of an air-conditioned suburban train has remained just a dream. But now, the Indian Railways has decided to explore the feasibility of introducing an elevated fully air-conditioned metro service on the existing Mumbai suburban route.

What the Railways is essentially envisaging is the construction of a Delhi Metro-like elevated corridor having dual tracks and a capacity to operate 15-coach trains at a maximum frequency of 90 seconds on the 60-km-long stretch between Churchgate and Virar on Western Railways.

However, setting up such a corridor faces a big challenge as there is only a four-hour break in operations on the route to undertake maintenance works. That too, in the night. During daytime, out of the 28 railway stations falling on the route of the proposed corridor, two stations handle close to 10 lakh passengers each, another eight stations deal with more than four lakh each while another 13 stations handle more than 2 lakh each, per day.

Ten days after Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav announced the project in his Rail Budget speech, the ministry has invited applications for engaging technical consultants to conduct feasibility studies for the project.

Significantly, the Railway Ministry has spelt out that it would allow the execution of this project through “public private partnership (PPP) on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis by a private entity (the concessionaire) to be selected through a competitive bidding process”.

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