RailEnquiry

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Southern Railway officials are awaiting a green signal from Technopark to take forward an idea of revamping the Kazhakoottam railway station and starting a morning shuttle service connecting Thampanoor and Kazhakoottam.Former Technopark CEO Mervin Alexander had initiated talks with former divisional railway manager Rajiv Dutt Sharma to jointly develop the Kazhakoottam railway station, the closest railway stop to Technopark which has 40,000-plus employees. However, nothing much has happened after both these officials left office.

"We would like to take the idea forward as it would've been a one-stop solution for rush hour traffic. The railways can provide four low-efficiency coaches and Kazhakoottam can be converted into a model station," said a top railway official.

There is not much traffic on the route between 8am, when the Jayanthi Janatha Express leaves Trivandrum Central, and 10am. While the Lokmanya Tilak Express leaves Trivandrum Central at 9.50 am, the Hapa Express leaves at 9.10am on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The idea mooted by the railways is that they could pull out four compartments from one of the night halt trains and run them to Kazhakoottam from Trivandrum Central and back between 8am and 10 am.

"It takes exactly 12 minutes, which will be a great relief to commuters as the road journey can take up to one and a half hours during peak hour. We can provide stops at Kochuveli and Pettah," the official said.

The railway has about 350 cents of usable land - around 700 metres in length and 20 metres in width, right by the roadside -- at Kazhakootam. "Ideally there should be tarred parking, waiting hall, toilets, restaurant and platform seating, which would approximately cost Rs 3 crore to build. This money can be organised from various IT companies and they could get branding space, in turn," he said.

Technopark business development manager M Vasudevan said the idea was worth a try.

"We should take this forward. The state government should also pitch in to determine the revenue sharing model with the railways. We had initiated some conversation and companies such as IBS, TCS and Infosys have shown interest, but not much has happened since then."