Commuters on the Harbour Line may not have to wait for the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) to extend platforms between Vadala Road and CST stations in order to accommodate 12-coach trains as the Central Railway (CR) is planning to shift the line and end it at P D’mello Road.
Senior railway officials said that they wouldn’t have to wait for the work of extending Harbour line’s CST platform to 12-coach since the work of shifting the line to P D’mello Road might finish even before the MRVC extended deadline of December 2015. A senior official said on condition of anonymity, “Now we have decided that we aren’t going to wait around any longer for Harbour line to be converted to 12-coach. We will finish shifting the station from Sandhurst, that is, Sandhurst Road, Masjid and CST to a new alignment, ending at P D’mello instead.”
Officials said that not only would this increase the capacity of Harbour line to accommodate 30 per cent more commuters, but it would also solve the problem of lack of available land between Parel to CST for the additional fifth and sixth lines. “The work of additional lines between Parel and CST is stuck since we do not have any land there, so when we shift the alignment we are going to use the land on which the Harbour line currently runs in order to take the fifth and sixth line up to CST,” added the official.
This will help the CR improve its punctuality that is currently hit due the constant interference of goods trains as well as out-station trains that do not have a dedicated line in from CST.
The MRVC had missed its deadline of January 2015 for the extension of Harbour line from nine-coach to 12-coach trains as it failed to extend platforms from Vadala Road to CST stations for the same. It had then asked the Railway Board for an extension of deadline.
