Mumbai: Parel Terminus — of which Elphinstone Road station is a part — has been due for a Rs 51-crore overhaul, which includes the broadening of the bridge that saw the tragic incident on Friday, for some time now. The proposal was being worked on for almost a decade and, while work finally began in March, there have been a lot of a lot of issues with platform-related operations near Parel due to signalling work.
Under the project, the Foot Overbridge (FOB) between the two stations was to be turned into a cable-stayed bridge that not only would be broader but also better equipped to handle vibrations caused by passing trains.
Explaining the situation, an official said, “The plan was to take some land from the Parel workshop extend the platforms and broaden both the platform and the Parel-Elphinstone bridge. This has hit a dead end as the Central Railway (CR) is trying to get a new signalling system called a Route Relay Interlocking (RRI) system and have put the work on hold. Due to the signalling system work we have stopped the work which was started in March this year.”
Officials felt that there was an urgent need to fix the problem immediately and thereby a new plan was created for the FOB. In fact, it has come to light that ex-railway minister Suresh Prabhu had sanctioned the extension of the FOB that was worth Rs 11.86 crore but that plan also came to naught.
