The Central Railway (CR) has revised its plan for Thakurli terminus, which will provide relief to commuters living in far-off suburbs, as it will help add at least 25 new local services from Kalyan onwards.
The new plan was recently presented to senior officials at CST according to which five platforms for the local trains will be elevated and a revised budget of '1, 215 crore will be provided giving big push to Mumbai suburban services. The terminus was part of the trio termini scheme, namely —Vasai terminus on the Western Railway (WR), the Panvel terminus on the Harbour and finally the Thakurli terminus on the CR mainline. The entire plan has been almost eight years in the making with tenders of the Panvel Terminus being opened for bidding back in late August, last year.
With the CR starting 13 new services from March 19, mainly catering to far-off places such as Kalyan to Kasara, Karjat and Badlapur, officials hope to further provide relief to this region with the Thakurli plan.
“The main role of the Thakurli terminus will be to increase our capacity to park rakes (trains) enabling us to run more trains on these lines. This will mean that we will able to operate trains from Thakurli to far off suburbs such as Karjat, Kasara, Asangaon, Badlapur, among others,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
Another major advantage would be the availability of a station from where outstation trains can be run as well.
“Right now commuters have to travel from these same far-off suburbs to Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) or CST to board outstation trains, and all of them do not necessarily stop at Thane and Dadar. This will enable us to decrease the choc-a-bloc of outstation trains coming into the main city as well give them an option to board the train from Thakurli itself,” added the official.
The CR is building this terminus on 80 acres of the now defunct Tata Power Plant; in fact, Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu had in his railway budget of 2015-16 announced that termini in crowded city areas will be slowly shifted to suburbs with the intention of decongesting train operations.
