South Mumbai to get its first new rail corridor in 100 years

For the first time after quadrupling the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT)-Thane railway a century ago, an ambitious plan to build a new 17.5-km rail corridor all the way to CSMT in south Mumbai has called for land acquisition and demolition of over 700 structures, railway buildings, rebuilding structures and even diverting the old harbour line to P D'Mello Road.

As part of the project, the first major thing to be taken up would be replacement of the Sion road overbridge (RoB). The bridge will be shut for traffic as it will need to be rebuilt to accommodate two new lines below it.

Sion road overbridge will be rebuilt to accommodate two new lines below it

Once the mega project is complete, it will boost the capacity of Central Railway by 100 per cent, boosting suburban rail traffic and completely segregating passenger trains between CSMT and Kalyan. The project will be carried out in phases and the process for the first phase has begun.

Land required

The first phase of the 10.1-km Kurla-Parel stretch requires around 10,060.99 sqm of land, of which around 3,639.34 sqm is government land and 6,421.65 sqm is private land. Of this, around 2,656 sqm land has already been acquired.

Work for the first phase of the project has already started at Sion

The fifth and sixth line between Kurla and CSMT has been divided into two phases - the first stretch of 10.1 km between Kurla and Parel and the second 7.5-km stretch between Parel and CSMT. The first phase is scheduled to be completed by 2024 while the completion and deadline of the second phase depend on land acquisition and other changes that are under planning.

"While work has already begun and is progressing well on phase one, one of the major hurdles is land acquisition. It also involves diverting the old harbour line station at Kurla, for which an elevated station is under progress. The line needs some land from the old Swadeshi Mill for diversion and the process for that is already on," a senior divisional official said.

Working around multi-storey buildings

For phase two, which will take some time, the railways have worked out an alternative arrangement to avoid the demolition of 11 multistorey buildings and their resettlement process, which could have stretched to decades. An alternative plan of diversion of harbour line to the east is being worked out by the railways.

The existing harbour line is likely to move away from its course towards the east and run parallel to P D'Mello Road to meet at CSMT's platform no. 18.

Included in the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP)-2 in 2009-10, the project was sanctioned in 2014 at a cost of R891 crore. Of this, Rs 191 crore has been spent so far on various works.

"This is a long pending project, and if the railways really manage to achieve it, nothing like it. It will indeed add 100 per cent capacity. What Mumbai railway requires is adding capacity like this, instead of all the minor upgrades happening. But it has to be fast. The Metros are coming up and it's a race against time," said Subhas Gupta, president of Rail Yatri Parishad.

17.5
Length in kilometres of the new railway corridor

700
No. of structures that need to be demolished