Railways plans commercial development at 115 sites

Mumbai: The Railways has handed over 115 sites, covering a total area of about 1,139 hectares to the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) for commercial development at different places.

In addition, 26 stations located in metropolitan cities and important centres have been identified for redevelopment as world class stations through public private participation (PPP) by leveraging the real-estate potential of the land around and the air space above the stations, minister of state for railways, R Velu said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

Railways will give the land to developers for commercial development through transparent bidding process on long-term lease basis for development work without any budgetary resources. The railway ministry has also identified 26 stations for redevelopment into world class stations through the PPP route.

Railways envisage no allocation for the projects except to the extent of meeting requirement of viability gap funding in exceptional cases of development of stations as world class stations.

The 26 stations identified for redevelopment as world class stations through PPP are : Nagpur, Pune, Carnac Bunder (Mumbai), Howrah, Lucknow, Anand Vihar (Delhi), Bijwasan (Delhi), Amritsar, Chandigarh, New Delhi, Varanasi, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Secunderabad, Tirupati, Ahmedabad, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Mathura, Bangalore, Gaya, Jaipur, Agra, Bhopal (Habibganj), Kanpur and Guwahati.

The Railways have set up Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) by an amendment to Railways Act, 1989 (Amendment No. 47 of 2005) for commercial development of vacant railway land for generating revenue.

The Railways also plan to set up new terminals and coaching complexes. The status of the new coaching and freight terminals are as follows:

* A  new coaching complex at Panvel, ner Mumbai,  has been planned for which land is being acquired.

* A new coaching terminal at Muzaffarpur, in Bihar, has been sanctioned in Railway budget 2008-09

* A new goods shed at Rewa, in Madhya Pradesh, has been sanctioned and the construction work has already commenced.

* Development of new coaching terminals at Anand Vihar Ph-II,. Bijwasan, Shakurbasti and Holambi Kalan, in New Delhi, has been sanctioned in Railway budget 2008-09.

* The Railways also plan to develop a world class passenger terminal at Baiyyappanahali in Bangalore.