19.6.08

Mumbai's AC Suburban Rail Plan

Major players from several countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Korea, have shown keen interest in carrying out the technical feasibility study for the proposed elevated suburban rail project in Mumbai. There are about 17 reputed companies involved in similar projects, including those from UK, Germany, Korea and the US, in the race to become technical consultant of the multi-crore Churchgate-Virar project, the first AC suburban rail service in Mumbai.Besides the 60 km-long Virar-Churchgate route, the consultants will also be asked to examine the possibility of extending the elevated corridor further to Mantralaya and Nariman Point to CST.The study will mainly focus on finding possible places on the ground to erect pillars for the elevated corridor.The feasibility study would include a master plan for secondfloor level platforms and stations, construction method, schemes for road connectivity, entry and exit to the stations, fly-overs, parking, study of environmental impact, investigation of soil composition and traffic surveys.
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.the Railway Ministry has spelt out that it would allow the execution of this project through PPP Public -Private partnership 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.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. They are looking at integrated suburban stations with new elevated platforms which are positioned directly above the existing platforms and are connected through common concourses.
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.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.

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