Gachibowli station expansion plans not on track

Moreover, the plan for a railway terminal at Gachibowli, Madhapur, has not materialised in years. Officials say that the terminals in Gachibowli and other parts of the city are not even in the proposal stage.

“The two stations Moula Ali and Vattinagulapally have only been identified as possible expansion points in future, although there are no immediate plans. Going by the traffic density, stations in the eastern and southern areas on the city are not even necessary. Most of the traffic is towards the west. The Gachibowli station is not even being considered for now,” said a senior official.

The issue had cropped up several times during HMDA town planning meetings as well, but there has not been a single concrete proposal till date. The idea of Railway authorities developing satellite junctions was first conceived five years back with the aim of decongesting the three major railway junctions in the city Kacheguda, Secunderabad and Hyderabad. However, it was put on the backburner after it was announced that the Secunderabad station would be developed as a “world class station”.

As a result of trains arriving and departing from these peripheral junctions, passengers were likely to depend on local MMTS trains to travel to city junctions. Therefore, plans of upscaling the MMTS daily journeys were also made. However, till date nothing has been done.

Meanwhile, as per APSRTC officials, the plan to decongest road traffic by diverting buses to off peak roads has also not been carried out. “The present situation of roads and bus stands is such that we have no space to even set up bus stands in several areas. To regulate the city, first the roads have to be widened before we can think of tweaking traffic movement,” said a senior official.