The Western Railway (WR) on Monday said it would not be able to stop the city’s lifeline for four hours to facilitate work for the metro railway project
The Mumbai metro and MMRDA authorities had asked for four-hour halt in suburban services for 57 days on WR to allow them to put up a rail bridge over Andheri station.
“We can’t stop the rail services as they are the backbone of the city. The metro authorities had initially asked for 2.5 hours in their preliminary request, which they upgraded to four in their second proposal. We have a time of some two hours between the last train and the first train and cannot spare more time than that,” Sharat Chandrayan, WR chief spokesperson said.
The Versova-Andheri metro railway will be running across the WR line at Andheri station. WR engineers said the Metro is laying a ‘through plate girder’ bridge over the Andheri station area and this particular process is a time-consuming process.
“There are many other better options and technologies available today and we do not know why the metro team has decided on this technology,” a senior WR track engineer said.
Railway officials said they had already issued permissions to the metro authorities as and when they had asked for, but giving a four-hour break would not be possible.
“The Metro engineers should give us a comprehensive plan in one piece and we shall try and work out a solution to the issue,” Chandrayan added.
Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd director KP Maheshwari told DNA that the company had applied for a four-hour power block to be taken on the WR route so as to facilitate the timely completion of the rail overbridge at Andheri.
“However, if the WR officials have a constraint about giving permission to the power block, a suitable solution agreeable to both the parties needs to be found out,” said Maheshwari.
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