The railway station here will get a major facelift with an expected outlay of Rs. 10 crores, for which a conceptual design has been prepared by the Vijayawada -based company 'Wildflower'. The proposal is to complete the redesigning in the next two years.
Announcing this at a press conference here on Wednesday, General Manager of the South Central Railway M.S. Jayanth observed that the commuter rush in the station had gone up tremendously in the recent past, with about one lakh commuters visiting the station a day on an average.
“The new design is aimed at solving the problem of congestion and making the station's premises more spacious.
To implement the new design, some of the railway quarters adjacent to the station will have to be demolished and a road will be laid towards southern side from the station premises,” he explained.
Once the new design was implemented, Mr. Jayanth said, commuters could reach any platform just by walking a few yards after getting down either from a city bus or any vehicle.
“Since the new design facilitates the movement of two lakh people at one go, there will be no problem even if the commuter rush doubles in the future,” he said.
Mr. Jayanth said that non-availability of land was a major setback to construction of a satellite station on the city outskirts. Hence, the focus will be more on improving infrastructure and passenger facilities in the station, so that it could cater to any number of commuters.
On the security front, the General Manager said that Vijayawada station had already been included in the Integrated Security System of the Indian Railways.
The station would get Rs. 8 crore to improve the surveillance.
“The required infrastructure like closed-circuit cameras and other sophisticated surveillance equipment will be provided by the Indian Railways,” he said.
On the overall security measures in the South Central Railway, Mr. Jayanth said that he was conductingco-ordination meetings with the additional directors-general of police of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra once in three months and reviewing the situation.
Consultant architect from the National Institute of Design Garimar Ostwal, Vijayawada Divisional Railway Manager Vasishta Johri, Additional Divisional Railway Manager B. Jaya Raju, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager B. Vijaya Bhaskar and others were present.
