Elevated Kurla station work begins

One of the toughest works on Mumbai's congested, saturated suburban railways has begun. Construction of an elevated three-line Harbour station above the eastern part of the sprawling Kurla station has started with the first of the pile-driving machines taking up position to construct pillars that will hold up the elevated station.

Speaking to DNA, Mahesh Gupta, chief administrative officer (construction), Central Railway (CR), confirmed the development and added that the project could take over three years to complete.

The Rs 96 crore tender for the work was finalised in the later months of 2015 and the technicalities were being worked out over the past several months, said CR officials familiar with the development. As per CR plans, the project entails creation of a rail flyover, starting from the north of Chunabhatti to the south of Tilak nagar stations with a three-line Harbour station right above the current platforms 7 and 8.

The elevated harbour line will have two lines that will move towards CST, Vashi and beyond respectively. One line will be utilised for trains that will terminate at Kurla, either from the CST end or the Vashi end.

The elevated station will allow a higher number of freight trains to move through Kurla station from the Mumbai Port Trust and Wadala end, said officials.

Kurla sees a major operational problem everyday as suburban trains and an ever-increasing number of goods trains have to be adjusted on the same set of tracks.

Currently, Harbour line trains wait for as long as 15 minutes for goods trains, carrying coal or fuel, to cross tracks and get onto the fast track to move towards Thane and beyond.

While the situation is bad enough now, it threatens to get worse once the Rs 107-crore third line — being built by Mumbai Port Trust, CR and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) jointly for freight trains — comes up between Wadala and Kurla.

This third line will bring in more goods wagons because the Mumbai Port Trust wants to transport coal coming into its port quickly and in larger quantities.

Officials say once the third line comes up, the number of goods trains will be far more than the 15 to 20 that currently pass through Kurla.

The third goods line project is monitored on a monthly basis by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to ensure greater coal supply for power projects across Maharashtra.