INDIA’s Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), part of the Ministry of Railways, has signed a contract with a joint venture of Mace and Systra India for the redevelopment of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in Mumbai, India's largest railway station.
The station is renowned for its neo-Gothic architecture, and has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2004. Formerly known as Victoria Terminus, it was renamed after the Indian warlord Chhatrapati Shivaji at the end of the 20th century. Located in central Mumbai, the station is used by both mainline and commuter services, and also houses the head office of Central Railway, one of Indian Railways’ 19 regional divisions.
Mace and Systra India will be working under a project management contract to redevelop the station, which will focus on preserving the station’s heritage while modernising it into a multimodal hub.
The partners say that the station will be transformed, including through the creation of new spaces on its roof, several catering areas, a new waiting room and a shopping arcade, while remaining open for the thousands of passengers that use it daily. Systra and Mace will be responsible for the overall management of the project, starting with the design studies, followed by supervision of site operations, with particular attention paid to quality, safety, and interface management, right through to delivery of the project.
“The CSMT station is a historic railway terminus and Unesco World Heritage Site in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, to which the local people are very attached,” says Systra India managing director, Mr Hari Somalraju. “The redevelopment of the station will improve public facilities and the range of services on offer, positioning Chhatrapati Shivaji among the most modern stations in the world.”
As well as being one of India’s largest railway stations and its oldest terminus, Chhatrapati Shivaji is a Mumbai landmark, and took 10 years to build between 1878 and 1888.
