Train travel from Dwarka to get easy

For the residents of West Delhi, taking a long-distance train means a tiresome ride to New Delhi Railway Station at the other end of the Capital. Not for long. HT Correspondent reports.

For the residents of West Delhi, taking a long-distance train means a tiresome ride to New Delhi Railway Station at the other end of the Capital. Not for long.

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A suburban station in Bijwasan, near Dwarka and the Gurgaon border, will be turned into a world-class station, on the lines of the redeveloped New Delhi station.

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee announced this in the Rail Budget on Friday.

“Bijwasan will handle trains to and from Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat and other parts of northwestern India. At present, it handles a few suburban trains,” said a senior railway official.

Bijwasan’s big leap, however, won’t happen till the suburban station turns into a terminal station before the Commonwealth Games, 2010.

With a view to creating a mega-terminal before the world-class station, Northern Railways has recently acquired 111.7-hectare land in Bijwasan, adjacent to the existing station, for Rs 214 crore.

“At a cost of Rs 225.9 crore, the work of the first phase of upgrade will begin shortly,” the official said.

The world-class station is a concept to create facilities akin to the best international airports in a railway station.

At New Delhi station, the work has already begun, at an estimated cost of around Rs 5,000 crore and a project duration of around seven years.

Owing to its location on the Delhi-Rewari line, which sees heavy freight movement, the Bijwasan mega terminal will also be readied as a freight-cum-coach terminal.

It will have multiple lines to handle segregated commercial as well as passenger traffic.