The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has set the ball rolling for setting up a smart card-based single ticket system for all modes of transport in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. All public transport operators, except Railways, have confirmed their participation in the project. The MMRDA has invited requests for qualifications for setting up an integrated ticketing system that will enable commuters to travel across the proposed monorail, Metro rail and public transport buses in Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli and Navi Mumbai with a single smart card. The agency hopes to rope in the Central Railway and Western Railway as well. “We are still waiting for the Railways’ confirmation. So initially, we will go ahead with having an integrated ticketing system for public bus transport, monorail and Metro,” said K Vijayalakshmi, additional chief, Unified Mumbai Metropolitan Transport Authority, which is implementing the project through MMRDA. The MMRDA plans to announce the names of qualified applicants on February 24 and intends to award a final contract by May or June next year. However, a fully-functional integrated ticketing system may not be possible before 2014. “Internationally, the experience has been that it takes a minimum of two years to set up a system like this and make it fully functional,” Vijayalakshmi added. “We were looking at completing it earlier, but considering it involves setting up a back office and central computer systems, it may take the same amount of time in India as well.” The MMRDA is looking at implementing the project on a design, build, finance operate and transfer basis, and has preliminarily pegged the cost at approximately Rs 350 crore. “We are yet to work out a lot of details including cost sharing, whether there would be any viability gap funding and so on. We first wanted to get the project started,” Vijayalakshmi said.