The first phase of the Metro rail project would be completed in the next three months, Maharashtra Minister for Higher & Technical Education Chandrakant Patil, who is also the guardian minister of the district, said on Friday (Dec 2).
He said the 33km-long network will be ready by March 2023 after visiting the Pune Metro’s Shivajinagar underground station. He also visited the operation control centre of Maha Metro at the Range Hill car depot and took a train ride from Garware College metro station to Vanaz on Friday.
The Minister also said that the Shivajinagar Metro station is a multimodal integration with easy access to the Shivajinagar railway station, bus depot of PMPML and MSRTC. He added that it would also connect the Metro station of Hinjewadi to the Civil Court route.
Once the work on both lines comes to completion, an inspection will be carried out by the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS). The new routes would be opened for citizens after the observations of CMRS are met.
On Nov 25, the Pune Metro successfully conducted a trial run from Garware College to Civil Court station.
33 km Phase 1 of the Pune metro rail comprises 29 stations and two lines – Vanaz to Ramwadi and Pimpri Chinchwad to Swargate. The Vanaz to Ramwadi route is elevated, while Pimpri Chinchwad to Swargate is elevated from Pimpri Chinchwad to Rangehill and underground from Shivajinagar to Swargate. It is being developed at the cost of Rs 12,000 crores. Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha-Metro) is the implementing agency for the project.
Commercial operations on two sections of Phase 1 – from Vanaz to Garware college and Pimpri Chinchwad to Phugewadi – were inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March this year.
The Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) is also developing a 23.3-km elevated line from Civil Court to Hinjawadi, comprising 23 stations. The line will align with the MahaMetro lines at the Civil Court interchange station. Tata Realty-Siemens is undertaking the project on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer model.
In the second phase, the implementing agency Maha-Metro plans to expand the Metro rail to additional routes, which also includes Neo Metro on the proposed 43-kilometre High Capacity Mass Transit Route (HCMTR) in Pune and 31-km in Pimpri-Chinchwad. The DPR is currently under preparation.