Beginning of the road for Bandra Terminus

Passengers travelling on Western Railway have always dreaded boarding a train from Bandra Terminus due to its shoddy condition and poor access, exacerbated by fleecing auto drivers and the long trudge from Bandra suburban railway station.

Taking note of this, WR recently began construction work on one of the most crucial and perhaps the most difficult, considering the monsoon, infrastructural work to overhaul and expand the approach road to the terminus, along with a revamp of the structure itself.

By early 2013, negotiating the congested lanes on the eastern side of Bandra suburban station to the terminus will no longer be as frustrating, thanks to the 7.5-metre-wide and almost 1-km-long elevated road being built over the existing one, which is choked to the seams and is one of the key culprits for passengers arriving late and often missing their trains. The elevated road is estimated to cost Rs28 crore.

Sources in WR said they were mulling restriction of access for two- and three-wheelers on the road so that vehicular movement is segregated and the entire stretch is decongested. Apart from the elevated road, which will have separate entry and exit points for private vehicles, there are several other works which are a part of the makeover plan, estimated to cost over Rs41 crore.

They include demarcating space for a full-fledged stand for BEST buses, addition of four platforms to the original three, three of which are functional, and construction of a new home platform which will be 10m wide and 585m long, which is expected to be commissioned by July 2012 at a cost of Rs13 crore.

Besides, a six-metre-wide south-end foot over-bridge and a skywalk connecting the platforms of the terminus to the skywalk at Khar station are also in the planning stage. The revamped station building station building will have food plazas, restrooms, booking office and other amenities.

As is becoming typical of all major infrastructural projects in the city, the long-delayed makeover of access routes to Bandra Terminus has begun to inconvenience commuters. The work on the elevated road, or road over-bridge (ROB) as the railways calls it, is the key culprit.

Vinod Shah, a commuter who was visiting the station area after several months and was waiting for relatives arriving from Gujarat, told DNA that monsoon and the construction work “virtually in the middle of the road” were adding to commuting woes as congestion had increased and vehicles were moving at a snail’s pace. “Due to potholes full of muck and the construction work that occupies crucial road space or spaces adjoining it, commuting has become difficult,” he said.

Vatsala Seth, a woman commuter said, “Very few auto rickshaws stand in the demarcated lanes and one has to compete with other commuters to hail one. If that is not enough, if the driver refuses, finding another willing driver is an arduous task.”

Initially, the deadline proposed by the Western Railway (WR) administration for the entire makeover was June 2011. However, chief spokesperson of WR, Sharat Chandrayan, said a more practical deadline considering the construction of all the amenities is almost an year-and-a-half more.

“In some cases, altogether new infrastructural amenities have been proposed and are being added while in others, basic amenities are being upgraded and modernised to serve commuters better and effect a value addition in the commuting experience,” he added.

Mostly, it is the construction of the ROB and the concourse building that is likely to directly affect commuters going to Bandra Terminus. The proposed deadline for both works is July 2012.