15 June,2026 08:07 AM IST | Mumbai | Rajendra B. Aklekar
Santosh Kumar Jha, the chairman and managing director of Konkan Railway. Pic/By Special Arrangement
Konkan Railway on Friday unveiled its much-awaited rail line-doubling plan, with a 263-km section to include three new stations and additional loop lines to boost capacity.
"Konkan Railway has laid out an ambitious five-year programme worth Rs 4704.08 crore, submitted to the Railway Board under the third financial restructuring, aimed at easing severe congestion on its 740 km route between Roha [in Raigad district] and Thokur [in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district]," Santosh Kumar Jha, the chairman and managing director of Konkan Railway, told mid-day.
He elaborated, "The centrepiece is 263 km of new doubling across two stretches - Thokur to Mookambika Road-Byndoor (112 km) and Vaibhavwadi to Majorda (151 km). This comes after a survey conducted in November 2025 found the Roha-Madgaon section running at 143 per cent line capacity utilisation and Madgaon-Thokur at 128 per cent, both well beyond saturation. The draft survey report has been submitted, with finalisation due by June 30. So far, only 54.66 km of the route has been doubled.
"To decongest the network, the railway plans three new crossing stations at Mayem, Neura-O-Grande, and Mookambika Road-Byndoor, along with additional loop lines at Gokarna Road, Honnavara, Barkur, Udupi, and Ankola, at a combined cost of Rs 696.77 crore," he said.
The Mumbai-Goa Vande Bharat will soon be a 16-car train. "There are plans to convert the train into 16 cars soon. The demand for the train is very high, and we will meet that demand soon," Jha said. The popular Train No. 22229/22230 Mumbai-Madgaon Vande Bharat Express has eight coaches, a smaller configuration even than a Mumbai local train, which has 12 or 15 cars.
Safety and infrastructure upgrades form a major chunk of the outlay, including new parallel tunnels alongside the Madure-Pernem and Old Goa tunnels ('994 crore and '492 crore), replacement of ageing track assets ('363.82 crore), comprehensive track renewal across 120 km of the Madgaon-Loliem and Shiroor-Udupi section, and geo-technical stabilisation work across 20 cuttings - a measure expected to use AI-based monitoring to manage tunnel safety during the monsoon season.
Other key items include eliminating 11 level-crossing gates by building road overbridges, replacing relay-based interlocking with electronic interlocking at 48 stations (Rs 301.25 crore), rolling out the Kavach automatic train protection system across the entire Konkan Railway network (rs 997.68 crore), and passenger amenity upgrades (Rs 104.98 crore).
