Western Railway officials have tried to give the jinxed Andheri elevated deck for autorickshaws another push by holding a meeting with BMC officials last week to get the approach alley to the deck cleared of shops.
But railway officials are now staring at another headache.
The Foot-Overbridge (FOB) at the northern-end of the station, which will have to be crossed by rickshaws while alighting from the deck, has just got more crowded thanks to the commissioning of the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar (VAG) metro corridor.
The Andheri metro station and the Andheri railway station are connected through this FOB and officials agreed that as the metro scales up its operations to achieve a daily ridership of 11 lakh, this FOB will be packed to the rim as Andheri station becomes the cross-over point for railway and metro commuters.
"Even the normal Andheri peak hour crowd on the FOB was giving us a headache to get rickshaws to cross the FOB. The crowds from Andheri metro station, probably the most crowded metro station, is making the plan look that much more impractical," a senior WR official said. This is, incidentally, India's first such vehicle-commuter intersection on an FOB.
Meanwhile, speaking to dna, WR chief spokesperson Sharat Chandrayan said the BMC had assured the railways of clearing the alley of shops "at the earliest". He, however, said a timetable could not be put to it as these are issues that involve civic procedures.
According to officials, once the BMC gives these shopkeepers notices to vacate to widen the road, the shopkeepers will have to submit documents showing ownership and legality of their shops. These documents will then be verified by the BMC. It is only after this lengthy procedure that the process of rehabilitating or relocating the shops and its keepers can begin.
The project has been a jinx right from inception with lack of coordination between WR and BMC delaying what was a novel attempt by the railways to use air-space over its station to create a traffic deck to reduce the mess in the civil area right outside the station.
The project was supposed to be completed by December last year; the deadline then shifting first to March 2014 and then to May, all of which have been broken without much change on the ground. Around 90% of the construction work is over and Rs8 crore has already been spent.
The project:
A brainchild of the construction department of WR, the plan is to build a 100-metre elevated autorickshaw lane, where autorickaws will enter from Swami Nityanand Road in front of the BEST depot at Andheri east. It will then move on to a two-lane elevated deck – 60-metre long and 34-metre wide with footpaths on either sides – built between the middle and north FOBs. From there the autos would pick commuters, cross the north-end FOB, and descend down a five metre wide ramp. Then the rickshaws will take the road beside the newly constructed railway police building near the metro station and move to MV Road. From here, the rickshaws move to Andheri-Kurla road.
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