E-Paper
New platform inaugurated at Shivajinagar railway station, local to Lonavla flagged-off
A new platform was inaugurated at Shivajinagar railway station on Monday with MLA Siddharth Shirole flagging-off a local headed for Lonavla from Shivajinagar at 1
A new platform was inaugurated at Shivajinagar railway station on Monday with MLA Siddharth Shirole flagging-off a local headed for Lonavla from Shivajinagar at 1.30 pm. In a major relief for passengers, locals headed for Lonavla will depart from this platform four times a day. The railways has spent around ₹2 crores on the construction of the 330 metres’ long platform.
Also present at the inauguration were MLA Sunil Kamble; former corporator Ganesh Bidkar; son of MP Girish Bapat, Gaurav Bapat; and additional divisional railway manager B K Singh. While local train operations are back to normal following the pandemic, passenger footfalls are less compared to before the pandemic. A majority of passengers have either stopped travelling to office due to ‘work from home’ or have changed their mode of transport.
A senior railway official on condition of anonymity said, “As per our data, daily around 22,000 passengers used to travel by local trains from Shivajinagar railway station prior to the lockdown in March 2020. Whereas now, this number has drastically come down to 10,000 last month when our local trains are fully operational now. There are two major reasons behind it; firstly, a large number of people are still working from home and secondly, the mode of transport has changed in the last three years. As many people have bought cars and electric bikes, they are now avoiding crowded travelling by local trains.”
Shripad Deshpande, who used to earlier travel by local trains but now travels to Pimpri daily by car, said, “During the lockdown, we were stuck at home and working from home. In 2021, we bought a car and now, I go to office thrice a week. So, I avoid travelling by local train anymore and travel by car instead.”
It was in 2018 that a decision was taken to construct a separate platform for local train operations from Shivajinagar railway station and accordingly, work was started. After 2019, there was a break due to the pandemic and work resumed not before 2022. While the work was expected to be completed by the end of December 2022, it was finally completed in January 2023.
