RailEnquiry

The World Class Station Project for Bhubaneswar has been abandoned and in its place, a satellite passenger terminal for the Capital City will be developed by the Railways.The East Coast Railway (ECoR) on Saturday announced that the satellite passenger terminal, “New Bhubaneswar”, will be developed between Mancheswar and Barang since adequate land is not available for a World Class Station around that location.“Work on all World Class Stations has been frozen by the Railway Board and in the last five years, area around New Bhubaneswar has become built up,” General Manager Indra Ghosh said.The kind of land required for World Class Station was not available given the number of multi-storeyed residential apartments and complexes that have come up, but for New Bhubaneswar terminal, the land in possession of the Railways will be adequate, he added.“If you look at the trend in major Indian cities, it is towards creating satellite terminal centres after saturation of the main stations. In New Delhi, Anand Vihar and Sarai Rohela have come up while Mumbai Central’s saturation led to Dadar and Lokmanya Tilak Terminal,” Ghosh said.This will mean there will be two major passenger terminals for the Capital __  Bhubaneswar and New Bhubaneswar.Currently, Bhubaneswar station reports a passenger movement of 7 lakh every month with an annual growth rate of 5 to 6 per cent.

New Bhubaneswar terminal will be located at the North side while Bhubaneswar is towards the South. If the plans fall into place, South-bound trains will originate from New Bhubaneswar and North-bound ones from Bhubaneswar. Two coach maintenance terminals will also be set up between Mancheswar and New Bhubaneswar.

Ghosh said New Bhubaneswar satellite terminal project will be part of the ongoing works of the ECoR and hence no separate source of finance needs to be outlined.

The ECoR, which has embarked on a number of line expansion works, expects that quadrupule line between Khurda Road and Barang will boost the significance of  New Bhubaneswar terminal with double lining of Barang-Cuttack segment is on the anvil.