Title - Alibaug railway corridor in limbo - Mumbai - DNA

Plans to get Alibaug connected via a suburban line to ‘fully develop’ the potential of the area, as one state official put it, is now in limbo as the Central Railway (CR) and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) are unable to come to any agreement on its funding.

While it is generally agreed upon by the railways and the state that such work would be divided in a 50:50 ratio, highly placed sources said that the MMRDA had intimated CR that it would not be able to pay half the cost of the Alibaug suburban corridor. An initial estimate by the railways put the total cost of construction at Rs400 crore.

“CR had written a letter to the MMRDA after an initial exploratory study of the line, but the MMRDA has now expressed its inability to pay,” a railway official said.

The plan was to build a completely new 28km corridor from Pen to Alibaug to run diesel suburban trains with Panvel as the hub, as the diesel line runs from Panvel to Pen.

According to officials who were part of the exploratory process, the old plan of upgrading the current goods line between Pen and Thal and then extending it further to Alibaug was discarded since the upgrade was too expensive.

“Moreover, the current goods line from Thal to Alibaug would have displaced a fair amount of structures which would have also increased the costs substantially. The alignment we have thought of is one that runs between the proposed Virar-Alibaug highway and the Pen-Thal goods line,” an official said. This turn of events brings another plan to halt as well — a 60km line from Panvel to Thal and another 5km stretch from Thal to Alibaug.