Indian Railways to convert stations into world-class ‘airport-like’ transit hubs! The Railway Ministry has decided to redevelop 90 railway stations into world-class transit hubs. The move has been decided in order to enhance passenger amenities at railway stations, hence providing a world-class experience. The redevelopment plan will include many major railway stations, which will be provided with many facilities including CCTV cameras, Wifi, renovation of the station buildings, modular water kiosks, water ATMs, LED lights, lifts, escalators, stainless steel benches, modular catering kiosks etc. Apart from these facilities, waiting halls, waiting rooms, retiring rooms, wash rooms of the stations will be improved as well. The railway station redevelopment project also found mention in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget 2018 speech.
The 90 selected railways stations which will be converted into world class transit hubs include many major railway stations across the nation such as Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada stations of Andhra Pradesh, Guwahati station of Assam, Patna, Patliputra, Sonpur stations of Bihar, Chandigarh station of Chandigarh, Raipur station of Chhattisgarh, Safdarjung, Anand Vihar stations of Delhi, Madgaon station of Goa, Gandhinagar, Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodra stations of Gujarat, Ambala station of Haryana, Shimla station of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu Tavi station of Jammu and Kashmir, Ranchi station of Jharkhand, Mysuru station of Karnataka, Kozhikode, Kottayam, Palakkad statons of Kerala, Jabalpur, Bhopal stations of Madhya Pradesh, Shivaji Nagar, Lonawala, Pune stations of Maharashtra, Bhubaneswar, Cuttak stations of Odisha, Puducherry station of Puducherry, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur stations of Rajasthan, Madurai, Chennai Egmore, Tiruchchirappalli stations of Tamil Nadu, Warangal station of Telangana, Lucknow, Allahabad, Jhansi, Mathura, Varanasi Junction, Ayodhya, Gorakhpur stations of Uttar Pradesh, Dehradun, Haridwar stations of Uttarakhand, Asansol, Howrah, Darjeeling stations of West Bengal. Apart from these, many more stations across the country will undergo the renovation plan.
For the redevelopment of over 600 major railway stations, the national transporter also launched an idea competition SRIJAN (Station Rejuvenation through Joint Action). The idea competition was launched at MyGov portal, under which all stakeholders like railway passengers, architects, urban planners, engineers are allowed to send their ideas for the stations’ redevelopment. However, the last date to submit the entries for this competition is March 26, 2018.