Our Foot Over Bridges will be temporary, ease only 20% crowd: Indian Army

At the Elphinstone Road station foot overbridge on Saturday morning. Nirmal Harindran

THE THREE railway foot overbridges (FOBs), to be made by the Bombay Engineer Group and Centre, Pune, or Bombay Sappers, as they are also known, would help ease off only 20 per cent of the crowd at the railway stations, said Brigadier Dhiraj Mohan, Commandant of the Bombay Engineer Group and Centre. He said these were only going to be temporary bridges to be constructed within three months to support the “crisis-like” situation in Mumbai.

“We are going to make modular bridges, according to the standard protocol of how they are made in the Army. They will be similar to the ones noticed in the hilly regions of the north like in the Himalayas. Once the foundation is ready and girders are launched, setting these steel bridges would not take much time. It will at least take fifteen more days to finalise the design and begin construction,” Brigadier Mohan told The Indian Express.

Brigadier Mohan added that according to the design, the brigdes would be as wide as 3.9 metres, extending up to 110 feet in length and would be 7.5 metres high.

Railway officials had raised eyebrows over the width of these bridges. They had complained about how 3 metres would not be sufficient to cater to the footfall at the stations and that the width must be at least 6 metres. “Bridges at congested stations like Parel and Currey Road cannot be this thin in width. They see higher footfall,” said a senior railway official.

Brigadier Mohan said these bridges won’t be the main bridges for the particular railway stations. “The railways is already planning 12-metre-wide foot overbridges at the stations, which is expected to ease off the current crowd. Our bridges will contribute in reducing the crowding by at least 20 per cent. They are being made as a temporary measure till the main bridge sets in,” he added.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited the Elphinstone Road railway station on October 31 after which a decision to rope in the Army to construct FOBs at three stations was announced. The decision came a month after 23 people were killed in a stampede on an FOB connecting the Elphinstone Road and Parel stations on September 29.

The Army is expected to complete the construction of three FOBs at Elphinstone Road, Currey Road and Ambivali stations by January 31, 2018.

“We are doing a technical study of the area. The work is going to be divided in two phases – we will begin work by laying the foundation of the bridges, a process likely to take a month. Different reasons, for example the soil quality, rail traffic and others is delaying the process,” said Brigadier Mohan.

“We are experts in making these bridges. We have made these bridges in less than two-three days in the past. We are taking time as suburban railway traffic cannot be affected. We will work on the bridges for two hours everyday due to the same reasons. The poor soil quality of the area is also delaying the process. While the foundation laying will take time, constructing the steel bridges would be a simpler process. That should get done within two-seven days,” he added.

Brigadier Mohan said Army personnel from the Sappers group in Pune will be deployed at the railway stations in the coming days for the bridges. “It will start with a requirement of four officers consisting of a commissioned officer, two joint commissioned officers and three non-commissioned officers at each bridge site to monitor the foundation work. This will be the basic civil work required to make the foundation of the bridges. This will at least take a month. After that, a platoon will be required to lay the structure. The work will be supervised by Colonel Vinayak Ramaswamy,” he added.