Let's make Ghatkopar station revamp an easy one

This picture has been used for representation purpose only

Six months on, the railways have not been able to decongest the dangerous Ghatkopar station, which records a footfall of 3.87 lakh people every day, one of the highest along Central Railway. The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) Ltd is still working on the final design and no one knows if it is anywhere close to completion, a report said.

This paper had highlighted the issue in its front-page report on August 30 last year, following which Union Minister Piyush Goyal had ordered the officials to take immediate action. Local MP Manoj Kotak, who had taken up the matter with Goyal citing the mid-day report, was quoted as saying that Ghatkopar will get long-term solutions within a month.

Then, a massive upgrade was planned with three new 12-metre footbridges, all linked by an elevated deck, an additional skywalk along the road. The report states that there have been designs, some groundwork and other work being done but everybody seems to be going round in circles, with little idea of when the project is supposed to take off. The commuters are irked at the slow pace of work. We hope all the bureaucratic wrangles are ironed out and work begins on the badly needed upgrade. Looking through a wider prism at most projects, there is a tendency to start facelifts with a real flourish, then, somewhere along the line the work gets stalled for some reason. It may pick up after a while or there is a frustrating status quo for months, if not years. Meanwhile, the ever resilient public is simply told to grin and bear it, that one day things will come to fruition.

At other times, it takes some kind of tragedy to truly get the ball rolling on repairs or facelifts. With locals and ministers agreeing that Ghatkopar needs attention, let us smooth the way for a much-needed decongestion initiative.

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