Railways to invest Rs1,866-cr in a third Narayangarh-Bhadrak line
08 Mar 2019
The Railways is constructing a third line between Narayangarh in West Bengal and Bhadrak in Odisha to expand capacity and decongest the section where the capacity utilisation has reached 138 per cent.
Construction of the 155 km line, which is estimated to cost Rs1,866.31 crore, will help generate direct employment for about 3.72 million mandays.
The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the construction of the third railway line is slated for completion during the year 2023-24.
The construction of the third line will help create capacity to cope with existing as well as additional traffic. The busy section between Narayangarh and Bhadrak is mainly used for the movement of coking coal to steel plants as well as the movement of export ore from the areas of Chakradharpur to several ports. The third line will help in easier movement of coal. This will help steel plants, power plants as well as the export industry, which will boost the economies of Odisha and West Bengal, and the entire East India.
The third line will ease congestion on this route. Narayangarh-Bhadrak section forms a part of the Howrah-Chennai trunk route. The present utilisation (with maintenance block) of the section between Narayangarh and Bhadrak is to the tune of 138per cent as per Line Capacity Statement 2014-15. Also, the route has to accommodate 47 pairs of coaching trains, including high-speed trains like Bhubaneswar Rajdhani, Howrah-Yesvantpur Duronto, Howrah-Puri Duronto, Sealdah-Puri duronto and Howrah-Puri Shatabdi Express. This makes it highly congested.
The CCEA also approved Phase-IIIA of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project, involving an estimated expenditure of Rs30,849 crore with completion cost of Rs33,690 crore.
The project is likely to be completed in five years.
Once completed, it would facilitate seamless travel for long distance suburban passengers by extending and creating corridors; improve passenger amenities and passenger movement at stations and help decongest entry/exit at the stations.
The project will also help improve safety, capacity and efficiency of suburban network by introduction of communication based train control system.
The Mumbai suburban railway network on Central and Western Railways has 385 route km. There are five corridors, two on Western Railway, two on Central Railway and one on Harbour Line. Everyday about 8.0 million people travel in the suburban sections in more than 3,000 train services. There is severe overcrowding in the suburban trains and during peak hours, passengers carried are more than four times the carrying capacity.
Nagpur Metro
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday flagged off the Nagpur Metro, through video conference from New Delhi. The 13.5 km long, Khapri-Sitabuldi section of the Nagpur Metro was inaugurated through the digital unveiling of plaque.
Addressing the gathering through video conference, prime minister congratulated the people of Nagpur for the second metro service in Maharashtra.The Metro will provide a better, cost friendly and environment friendly means of transportation for the people in Nagpur, PM added.
Nagpur metro will also create employment opportunities for the youth and will also help in the further growth of the city, he added.
The prime minister said that 400 km of operational network of metro have been built in the past four and half years, he said, adding that work is on 800 km of metro network is progressing across the country.
He also spoke of the benefits of the recently launched common mobility card, the `One Nation-One Card’. The indigenously developed card merges debit card with mobility card and has removed India’s dependence on other countries for building such a card.