CR to initiate work on Parel Terminus next month

With an aim to transform Parel Railway station here into a terminus, the Central Railway (CR) will take up eight different infrastructure works from the first week of June, a Railways official said.
Parel Terminus is a part of the fifth and sixth line project funded under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project-II. The project would cost Rs 51 crore.
The station needs upgradation in the wake of mushrooming corporate offices in Parel which have led to huge growth in the number of train passengers.
"The surroundings of Parel railway station have seen a huge development and mushrooming of corporate offices on the erstwhile textile mill land. As a result, the number of passengers has gone up. Therefore, transformation of this station was very important for us," chief spokesperson of CR, Narendra Patil, told reporters here.

The eight infrastructure works that would be carried out at the cost of Rs 51 crore, include construction of a terminal platform with cover overshed, widening of down local line and up local line platforms to 10 metres, providing a new foot over bridge (FOB) in the middle of the platform connecting East and West to all the platforms.
"These works would get over in the next 18 to 20 months. This would help Parel station mitigate the crisis situation in case of disruption of services between Parel and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST)," he said.
"After the Railway Minister gave a push to these proposed projects, we launched the execution plan and awarded tenders. The actual would start from the beginning of June," the official added.

The work was earlier expected to start in October 2013. However, failure to get estimates sanctioned from the Railway Board for laying of the fifth and sixth lines between CST and Kurla, of which Parel Terminus is a part, delayed the tender process, Patil said.