Rlys to construct more foot overbridges for commuters

Both the Western Railway (WR) and Central Railway (CR) are building new foot overbridges (FOBs) in the coming months.

Both the Western Railway (WR) and Central Railway (CR) are building new foot overbridges (FOBs) in the coming months.

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While the WR plans 40 such FOBs, the CR will construct 10 FOBs across its stations.

The WR is slowly converting all 9-car trains to 12-car and only 20 such 9-car trains remain. “With increasing number of 12-car trains, the burden on existing infrastructure will increase, and there is a need for evacuating people faster. So we are adding more FOBs for which work has started,” said Sharat Chandrayan, chief PRO, WR.

The WR has started work on eight FOBs, expected to be complete in the next 10 months. These FOBs are at Dahisar, Naigaon, Mira Road, Nallasopara, Goregaon, Vasai, Bandra and Dadar.

The remaining FOBs at Virar, Mahalaxmi, Matunga Road, Kandivli and Elphinstone Road have been sanctioned and are expected to complete by December 2012. The WR will also extend and repair existing FOBs. Repair work on the Borivli and Andheri FOBs are underway.

The CR has identified stations where crowding has increased and are now building new FOBs. Some of them are at Parel, Vidyavihar, Kalwa, Diva and Kalyan. They are already extending the FOB at Thane after they received complaints from commuters.