Commuters at Prabhadevi station will soon have a crucial connection to the new foot overbridge (FOB) connecting it to Parel station. The Western Railway (WR) has overcome a crucial hurdle by installing a new electronic interlocking system, the first of its kind in Mumbai’s suburban section.
At present, the new FOB connects one platform in Parel and lands outside the station area in Prabhadevi. For it to be connected to the Prabhadevi station, the platform had to be extended towards the north.
“The old route relay interlocking (RRI) cabin needed to be demolished, before we could extend the platform. The new RRI cabin is a huge improvement on the older one as it is completely electronic,” Ravinder Bhakar, chief public relations officer, WR, said.
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An Electronic Interlocking System removes the requirement of buttons. Its control is enabled by a software. Mr. Bhakar said that the old RRI building was being demolished and the platform extension work and link to the FOB would be completed by February.
The 12-metre-wide FOB, which was commissioned in June, connected platforms in Parel station, but did not give relief to commuters who wanted to switch to Parel station or vice-versa.
Commuters still have to use the old FOB, which continues to be narrow and inadequate for the number of commuters that use the two stations. In aftermath of the stampede, the Railways had asked the Army to build an FOB, which currently serves just one platform at Parel. It is nearly 500 metres away from Prabhadevi station.
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“The Railways should have thought about this while they were building the new FOB and should have worked parallely. I hope they they build the connection to the new platform soon,” said Saiganesh Lingayat, who travels to Prabhadevi station regularly.