Mumbai Suburban Rail Network to get 30 FOBs

The Railway Board has sanctioned 30 foot overbridges for the Mumbai suburban section on an out-of-turn basis. Of this, 14 FOBs will be built on the CR suburban section, and 16 under the jurisdiction of the WR.

Also, wherever space permits, most of these FOBs will also be fitted with escalators, railway officials said.

According to a letter written by Ashish Kumar, Director, Railway Board, to the General Managers of WR and CR, on November 3, 2017, the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation Ltd (MRVC) assigned construction work on 30 FOBs in the suburban section of the city. Mirror has the copy of the letter.

When contacted Sanjay Singh, Executive Director (planning), MRVC, he said, “We received the letter of the Railway Board, and are now planning to construct these FOBs at the earliest.”

In the last three years, MRVC has constructed 27 FOBs in the city suburban network, which is why they have been handed this responsibility. When as

ked about the timeframe, Singh said, “Generally, we need around one year to complete the construction of FOBs, but now we have decided to take help from experts in the construction field to minimise the timeframe.”

However, a senior Indian Railways officer said that Piyush Goyal, central minister of railways, wants to complete the construction work on new FOBs within a year. “That’s why the Railway Board has decided to assign construction work of 30 FOBs to the MRVC,” the officer said.

“We are going to organise an open interactive session on November 10. All technical experts in the construction field are invited to attend it,” said an MRVC officer. “The purpose of the session is to find new techniques to minimise the timeframe.” Apart from these, MRVC will also build around 20 more FOBs under MUTP.