Build ROBs and let us shut level crossings, Central Railway tells TMC

The truck that rammed into the level crossing pole at Thakurli. Pic/Shrikant Khuperkar

A day after mid-day reported about a truck ramming into the level crossing gate at Thakurli, the Central Railway has asked the Thane Municipal Corporation to build road overbridges (ROBs) at all the three level crossing gates between Thane and Dombivli - Thakurli, Kalwa and Diva. Officials want these level crossings shut owing to punctuality of local trains getting affected.

CR officials said they had a meeting with various state and municipal agencies. As per plans drawn up by the railways, they are looking at having ROBs over all level crossings and shut them down completely.

The hurdle
"We will be completing our portion of the ROB by March 2017. The local corporations need to identify the space for landing the ROB," said Ravinder Goyal, Divisional Railway Manager (Mumbai), CR.

The centre portion of part of the ROB landing at Thakurli is expected to be ready by deadline. Sources, however, said the illegal buildings and structures around pose a hurdle to the plan. This is among the biggest problems preventing the authorities from going ahead with the construction of the ROB, as there is little landing space, with locals and politicians there not allowing demolition of these structures.

Seeing red
On Thursday, train services were affected at Thakurli after a truck rammed into the level crossing pole. The gates are attached to the signal circuits of the railways.

Normally, whenever the level crossing is affected, the train services are too as signals turn red and run on ‘A-marker'. This affects the punctuality of services.

CR officials have said that trains lose a lot of time as a result of these gates - 90 trains get delayed by 10 minutes on an average daily. The gate at Diva is opened 38 times a day, with the highest frequency being between 8 am and 10 am. Gates at Thakurli, Kalyan, Kalwa and Ambivli are opened 13 times a day.