Imagine walking right out of the metro station and into a mall or even your office! All you have to do is take a skywalk!
Exciting right?
Well, this may turn into reality, as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) inspired by Japan and Dubai is proposing to connect upcoming metro stations with malls and offices in the vicinity via skywalks.
The idea is to ease commuters from the inconvenience of having to get on the road to reach their destinations and help them reach them walking straight from the metro station.
Speaking to the Indian Express, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner of MMRDA, Pravin Darade said, “We are considering connecting malls and offices near the Metro stations directly through skywalks. The commercial establishments can approach us if they want to connect to the stations.”
While MMRDA will take up the responsibility of designing the connector, the malls or office buildings that these skywalks will connect will be asked to fund the construction.
The project will not only give commuters direct access to nearby malls and offices, but also decongest roads as citizens will no longer exit from the stations and onto the road in huge numbers.
“This model is widely followed in Japan. Though it is densely populated you will hardly find people on the streets as they are directly connected to their destinations from the metro stations. Each station has around 100 connections to the places nearby. We will not be able to have as many but we can connect to the important ones,” Darade told the publication.
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MMRDA plans to implement the project on the Metro 2A and Metro 7 corridors on the Link Road and the Western Express Highway in the first phase, both of which have several malls and office spaces.
The infrastructure development has also appointed a consultant to study the possibility of providing multi-modal integration at stations added the publication.
(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)