Work on main bldg held up, Gzb rly stn revamp faces 6-mth delay

Ghaziabad: Renovation of the Ghaziabad railway station, which began in Jan 2023 and was expected to be completed in 30 months, is likely to overshoot its deadline by six months at least.Officials said work on the quarter building and station’s entry has begun, but renovation of the concourse is yet to start. They expect that work will conclude by the end of next year.“The Ghaziabad station is on the Delhi-Howrah line and caters to local commuters. Work was scheduled to be completed by the middle of 2025, but given the pace, it will now be completed by the end of 2025,” an official associated with the renovation said on Wednesday.The official said that the station’s existing structure dates to the British era.“The station is spread over 1.5 lakh sqm of area. Before civil work could begin, older structures, including quarters, had to be demolished and 190 trees had to be chopped. Given the busy rail section, we will have to ensure that rail traffic doesn’t get affected while work goes on. This is why we’ll have to push the deadline,” the official added.The station has an average footfall of 50,000 passengers daily, and around 200 trains cross every day.According to the renovation plan, the existing single-storey building will be converted into a three-storey complex and will be equipped with foot overbridges (FOBs), escalators, automatic ticket vending machines and multi-level parking.The redevelopment project, coming up at an estimated cost of Rs 350 crore, is important to decongest railway stations in Delhi-NCR.A 24-metre skywalk has been planned to integrate six existing platforms, and in addition, two FOBs have been planned with ramp facilities. Multi-level parking and a dedicated lane within the station premises will come up for e-buses. A signal training school and 96 railway quarters will be built as well. Officials had earlier said that the focus is on integrating multi-modal commuting in NCR as rapid rail has been introduced and the Metro network is being expanded. For this integration, the railway stations also needed to be upgraded. The redevelopment work is part of central govt’s Amrit Bharat scheme, under which 508 stations across the country are being renovated.We also published the following articles recently