Railways explores elevated Metro on Mumbai’s Churchgate-Virar route

For 6.9 million people daily commuting on Mumbai’s suburban rail network in Super Dense Crush conditions...

For 6.9 million people daily commuting on Mumbai’s suburban rail network in Super Dense Crush conditions (17 passengers occupying one square foot of area), the idea of an air-conditioned suburban train has remained just a dream. But now, the Indian Railways has decided to explore the feasibility of introducing an elevated fully air-conditioned metro service on the existing Mumbai suburban route.

What the Railways is essentially envisaging is the construction of a Delhi Metro-like elevated corridor having dual tracks and a capacity to operate 15-coach trains at a maximum frequency of 90 seconds on the 60-km-long stretch between Churchgate and Virar on Western Railways.

However, setting up such a corridor faces a big challenge as there is only a four-hour break in operations on the route to undertake maintenance works. That too, in the night. During daytime, out of the 28 railway stations falling on the route of the proposed corridor, two stations handle close to 10 lakh passengers each, another eight stations deal with more than four lakh each while another 13 stations handle more than 2 lakh each, per day.

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Ten days after Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav announced the project in his Rail Budget speech, the ministry has invited applications for engaging technical consultants to conduct feasibility studies for the project.

Significantly, the Railway Ministry has spelt out that it would allow the execution of this project through “public private partnership (PPP) on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis by a private entity (the concessionaire) to be selected through a competitive bidding process”.

The plan is to have an elevated corridor from Churchgate to Virar, running along the existing suburban corridor of Western Railway (WR) and to be constructed within the Railways’ right of way. “As it is not feasible to lay two additional lines alongside the existing tracks within the right of way, there is no choice but to explore an elevated corridor,” an official said, adding the ground space within the Railways’ right of way was totally used up.

Rail Bhawan sources said they were trying to have an alignment which was feasible and caused the least possible disturbance to the existing train operations. “We are looking at integrated suburban stations with new elevated platforms which are positioned directly above the existing platforms and are connected through common concourses,” added sources.

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The Railways wants to retain the existing platforms and tracks at ground level without engaging in any realignment or rebuilding and going in for only retrofitting for modernisation.

To commercially exploit the airspace above the tracks, Railways is open to allowing commercial development on the stations and real estate development on railway land around stations through relocation of existing offices and other structures, officials said.

The Railway Ministry has also made clear its preference for redeveloping the existing stations into integrated stations wherein the existing platforms at the ground level would be refurbished, a concourse would be set up at first-floor level and new platforms for elevated rail corridor would come up at second-floor level.