Mumbai elevated corridor plan falls by wayside

The Rs. 19500 crore Oval Maidan-Churchgate-Virar (OCV) elevated corridor is finally in its last leg with officials agreeing that an announcement to scrap it might be made sooner rather than later.

Officials said that there had been no movement on the project since railway consultancy firm RITES submitted a traffic plan- as demanded by the state government- of the project taking into consideration new ridership projections because of the Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ metro. The plan was submitted more than 6 months ago.

While Western Railway officials refused to speak on record, a query sent to Girish Pillai, Executive Director (Infrastructure) Railway Board on whether the project had been officially scrapped didn't elicit a response.

The project will remain one of the biggest black marks in the country's infrastructure scenario, agreed officials, as it failed to take off despite undergoing massive design changes.  

The requirement of acquiring private buildings- a nightmare in Mumbai- was scaled down from 52, 800 square metres to 1,170 sq m, a massive reduction of 98 percent, and private land from 10.69 hectares to 2.23 hectares, a reduction of 79 percent, to make the project easy. 

The reduction in land requirement was due to the railways deciding to make the alignment underground from Bandra to Oshiwara and making the depot at Mira Road over 40.8 hectares instead of 65 hectares in Virar. 

"It still remained in limbo as the state and the railways couldn't sign the State Support Agreement since May 2012," said a top-ranking railway official.