Reliance Metro

Reliance Metro

Mumbai is a very, very crowded city. The main section of town is surrounded on 3 sides by water, features next to no "cross town" public transport, and routinely floods during monsoon. For this reason, there is an ambitious public works project underway to build a crosstown metro system.

While on my way to a meeting last week, we sat in traffic along a section of road that was being torn up for the Metro to go in. The metro is a joint venture between public & private firms - and not surprisingly the Reliance ADA group is a part of the construction. This stood out to me as the construction barricades make it appear the metro is a purely private enterprise.

In fact, the metro will be built under a build, operate, transfer program. In this program, private investment in used to construct the metro system. After the company has recouped their investment from operations (& presumably turned a hefty profit), they then transfer operations back to the government.