The Chembur-Wadala section of the Mumbai Monorail was on Monday given a safety certification which could see services open to the public sometime this month.

“The final safety certificate for the 8.8-km first phase came today,” said UPS Madan, metropolitan commissioner, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).

The certificate was issued by GP Garg, retired Commissioner of Railway Safety, who was appointed as an independent engineer by the state government to inspect and certify the monorail system.

Ashwini Bhide, additional metropolitan commissioner, said that the safety certificate has been forwarded to the state government. Now, the state government will have to complete the formality of issuing a notification for commissioning of the system.

The notification will contain norms for operation and maintenance of the system, which requires the chief minister’s nod. This should not take long as a draft notification has already been prepared. But it might take a while to get a VIP, most likely a political dignitary, to flag off the services.

According to information available, MMRDA has set January 26 as the commercial operation date for the open ing of the system for public use. Asked about the inauguration date, Bhide said, “The date has not been finalised. It will be done very shortly.”

The Chembur-Wadala section has seven stations and fares will range between Rs5 and Rs19.

Services will initially operate for about five hours every nine minutes.

The monorail is being built by a consortium of Larsen & Toubro and Malaysia’s Scomi Engineering, The entire 19.5-km system from Chembur to Jacob Circle (via Wadala) will be the world’s second longest, after the one in Osaka, Japan.