Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday said the trial runs of the Colaba-SEEPZ Metro rail line 3 in Mumbai will be held underground at Marol-Maroshi, which is outside the Aarey green belt.The CM in a statement on Thursday instructed officials that not a single tree in Aarey should be affected by the Metro trial runs.
At present, work is underway on the Marol-Maroshi subway and a ramp will be constructed near it to test the work. No tree will be cut down for that. Work on Metro Line-3 from Colaba to Seepz is in progress. For this route, Alstom has built an 8-coach train at Shree City, Andhra Pradesh. This vehicle has undergone technical testing at the Technical tests of eight compartments (of Metro train) manufactured by an Andhra Pradesh-based company have been completed and now they will be brought to Mumbai for trial runs of 10,000 km, he said in the statement. After the success of these tests, 31 such trains will be available to run on this route, the administration said.
The permission given by the state government to set up a temporary service for testing the metro will now give impetus to the project. So far, 97 per cent of the project has been completed and about 70 per cent of the construction work has been completed. We will reach another milestone by starting the testing of the first model train. The construction of the temporary facility will begin soon and will be completed in two and a half months, said Ranjit Singh Deol, Managing Director, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation.