Underground metro, sea bridge to transform Mumbai's mobility by 2022: CM

Confident of finishing all transport projects in Mumbai by 2022, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said the city will see a transformation in terms of mobility with projects ranging from underground metro and sea bridge to coastal roads, elevated suburban trains and new airports.

Fadnavis, who was here to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting and promote Maharashtra as an investment destination for global businesses, also said there is a huge scope for all industries in the manufacturing sector in the state and the services industry is also growing very fast.

"Now the focus is also on Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution sectors such as artificial intelligence, innovations, startups and big data analytics. These will change the face of how the businesses look today and they will create jobs. One of the big focusses is Industry 4.0," the chief minister told PTI in an interview here.

He also said that his government was working on creating an IFSC (International Financial Services Centre) in Maharashtra and he was confident to be able to do that.

"Mumbai is the natural financial services centre. Besides, Maharashtra is preparing the country's first fintech policy which we will publish in coming days. The future is Fintech or financial technology and I feel Maharashtra can lead on this front," he said.

On various infrastructure projects underway for Mumbai, where traffic snarls have often led to criticism from various quarters, Fadnavis said all projects will start getting delivered from next year itself and would be completed fully by 2022.

"These include 258 km of metro network in Mumbai and suburban areas, which would be one of the biggest in the country. About 50 km of elevated suburban railway network is being set up. We are also making coastal roads. a new sea link, a sea bridge from Mumbai to New Mumbai, an airport in New Mumbai is coming up, an underground metro is there and on eastern coast there will be RoRo service. So these are projects of all modes of transport.

"There is a new airport for Mumbai and the work has begun already. Among all these, work has begun on almost all major projects and there are a few for which we will issue work orders this month itself or maybe next month," he said.

Fadnavis said there is no single project that is still at conception stage.

"By 2022, I will beat the rate of urbanisation in terms of mobility in Mumbai," he asserted.