The railway tracks dissecting the city through the middle have always affected the schedules of the city’s commuters with the gates remaining closed at every 5-10 minute intervals resulting in people having to waste more than fifteen minutes at every instance until the train passes through. This was reported by G Plus in an exclusive article which conclusively proved that the passage of trains brought Guwahati to a standstill for 18 hours every day. The story had an immediate impact on former Union Minister of Railways, Suresh Prabhu, who thereafter had announced construction of elevated railway tracks to mitigate the problem. To put words into effect, Union Minister of State for Railways, Rajen Gohain, said on 2nd October that a survey has been underway to elevate the tracks from Kamakhya railway station to New Guwahati.
He said that the contract of the survey has been give to the central government enterprise, RITES Ltd. and the project will be started after the receipt of approval in the feasibility report. Informing about the progress of the work of elevation of railway tracks, Chief Public Relation Officer of NF Railway, Pranav Jyoti Sharma, said that work for carrying out Final Location Survey (FLS) for construction of an elevated railway corridor has been sanctioned at an estimated cost of Rs. 12.88 crores. “Four parallel elevated railway tracks over the existing railway tracks are envisaged in the project which, in railway parlance, is known as quadrupling. The total length of this elevated corridor would be 10.30 km. At present tender for FLS is being finalised. Once the FLS is completed, the Detailed Project Report (DPR) would be prepared containing all details of the project and its estimated cost. The DPR would be submitted to the Railway Board for sanction of the project,” said CPRO Sharma.
Elevation of the railway tracks will cut down commuting time massively. This project includes the upgradation of the Guwahati station into a luxury terminal. It will be like the airports and will have a shopping mall inside. The project is meant to contribute to the smart city project.
Railway has also planned for substantial modernization in the field of operations, maintenance, safety, communications and passenger amenities to bring in perceivable improvement in customer experience. “We are moving towards 100% digitization of ticketing and payments. Track maintenance is planned to be made 100% mechanized. For passengers, improved amenities like water vending machines at station platforms, automatic ticket vending machines, lifts & escalators, LED display boards for better visibility etc. are being planned. We are also embracing renewable energy sources to reduce our carbon footprints. Solar energy is being harnessed by utilising station building roofs, office building roofs etc. We have also put up solar powered lights at level crossing gates and replacing most of the conventional lights with LED bulbs,” said Sharma.