The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) will soon set up two more car sheds – at Vangaon on the Western Railway (WR) and Karjat on the Central Railway (CR) – for the suburban trains.
The ₹33,000 crore project, planned under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP-3A), will enhance the suburban railway’s capacity by adding new lines and rakes.
A senior official of MRVC said they have identified the site for the car sheds at Vangaon and Karjat. “We require over 30 hectares of land, most of which is barren. While part of the land is owned by the Railways, the rest will have to be acquired. We are awaiting final nod from CR and WR to begin the process,” he said.
Currently, Mumbai’s suburban network has six car sheds. Of these, three are located on CR at Kurla, Sanpada, and Kalwa, while three on WR are at Mumbai Central, Kandivli and Virar. Over 250 local trains undergo inspection and maintenance at these sheds every day, besides parking.
The MRVC official said the new car sheds will be high-tech. They also plan to install sensors for inspection of locals, which is done manually at present. “Each car shed will have state-of-the-art facilities and will be designed to maintain around 65 trains at a time.”
He added that they had earlier identified a plot of land at Mohape for a car shed on CR, but had to change it owing to high-gradient, as high amounts of landfill would have been required to even the plot. Earlier, MRVC had built a new car shed at Virar under MUTP-1 and later expanded it under MUTP-2.
Under MUTP-3 and MUTP-3A, Mumbai is also set to get 47 and 210 new air-conditioned (AC) locals respectively.
First Published: Jun 10, 2019 04:11 IST
