Harbour line to be extended up to Goregaon

The harbour line of the suburban train network will be soon extended up to Goregaon, the railways said on Thursday.

The harbour line of the suburban train network will be soon extended up to Goregaon, the railways said on Thursday.

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In the next four years, trains plying on the western side of the Harbour line will terminate at Goregaon, not Andheri.

The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), coordinating body of the Rs 300-crore Mumbai Urban Transport Project, has drawn up the plan and started basic groundwork under Phase II of the project.

It plans to extend Andheri station’s platform numbers 6 and 7 towards Goregaon.

But this means demolishing several structures such as foot overbridges, food stalls, booking counters, Government Railway Police building, water tank, transformers that supplies electricity, Jogeshwari parking stand and sheds. There is also a religious structure on Andheri (West) that may obstruct the alignment.

Also at Andheri the gap between the rail line and road is just 6 metres. It will be a difficult for the MRVC to fit both up and down lines separated by a platform in this space after razing the structures.

“The project is much more difficult than extending the line between Mahim and Bandra underneath Mahim Causeway which took us more than three years,” said MRVC managing director P C Sehgal.

MRVC has barricaded the stretch, is measuring the space required, building a boundary wall and levelling the ground.