In what maybe seen as a more inclusive and transparent process for future planning of the Mumbai suburban network, a workshop on Mumbai Urban Transport Projects (MUTP) - rail component will be jointly organized by the World Bank and Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) for the public, in the first quarter of 2011.
The idea is to invite papers from the public – transport planners, architects, heads of civil groups, IIT, MMRDA and several other expert organizations to ascertain the views of the larger group while planning the future development of the suburban system in Mumbai.
“We will be organizing a workshop for the public (experts in different fields) to understand MUTP projects and how these help commuters, somewhere in the first quarter of next year. We will also invite papers from transport planners, architects, heads of civil groups, IIT, MMRDA and various other expert groups so that we can shortlist about 10-12 papers that will help us decide what should be done for railway systems in the future,” said, Project Team Leader (MUTP) for World Bank, Hubert Nove-Josserand while addressing the media last week at the MRVC office in Churchgate.
The suggestion to invite papers to gauge what people, who are experts in different aspects of development projects have in mind about the city has been proposed by the World Bank team during a two day workshop organized on Oct 20 and 21 with the MRVC to launch the MUTP Phase 2A project.
Various stakeholders of the MUTP project – Central and Western Railway, Research Designs & Standards Organization (RDSO) and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) attended the conference jointly organized by the World Bank and MRVC, the implementing agency of MUTP (rail component).
While ideas for the future development of railway systems are being mooted, a constant vigil for the ongoing MUTP Phase 2A has been reiterated by the project team leader.
“The challenge this time is that MRVC ensures that Phase 2A is completed on time. We will monitor the project closely,” noted Josser and while discussing the progress of Phase 2A. MUTP Phase 2A is scheduled for completion by June 2015.
The workshop was organized to reaffirm the role of different stakeholders of the MUTP project. Each executing agency has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the MRVC to clearly define their roles and responsibilities towards this project. The World Bank is likely to conduct the first of its bi-annual supervision of the project in March next year.