Railway Network Expansion Cleared: 224 km Doubling Approved

So, the Union Cabinet has finally cleared the two railway projects and also the second phase of Pune metro. The announcement didn’t come with much noise. No big campaign tone, just a standard briefing, but if you’ve been travelling regularly on these routes, you would know why people are calling this important.

The total stretch for the doubling and extra tracks is around 224 km in Gujarat and Maharashtra. Plus the Pune Metro gets 31.6 km more, and all of it is elevated. On paper, this seems like a line item in infrastructure decisions, but the groundwork affects actual daily travel.

What Exactly Was Approved?

There are two specific railway sections here:

• Devbhumi Dwarka (Okha) to Kanalus track doubling: 141 km
  
• Badlapur to Karjat third and fourth line: 32 km

Anybody who has travelled on Mumbai’s suburban network, especially that Badlapur–Karjat stretch, already knows how crowded the route feels. During peak hours, trains slow down, hold, or crawl because different services are sharing space: suburban, freight, express, everything. The congestion hasn’t been news, it’s been normal.

Meanwhile, the Gujarat route is busy for a different reason. The Okha–Kanalus part serves pilgrimage travellers going toward Dwarkadhish Temple. Over the years, that movement increased, but the tracks stayed mostly the same. So delays became part of the journey. Doubling may sound ordinary, but it changes reliability.

If your train is delayed in transit, you can use RailMitra’s live train running status to track the most accurate and update train timings.

Who Is This For?

According to the project details, the work will touch:

• 585 villages
• about 32 lakh people
• four districts
  

It’s not just a number game. These are daily travellers: students, workers, traders, railway dependents, migrant families and so on. Trains remain the most practical mode of transport for them, more than flights or long-haul buses.

And then there’s freight. Something most passengers forget exists until a freight rake delays their train. The expected freight volume after upgrades sits around 18 million tonnes per year. That includes cement, salt, petroleum products, coal, industrial goods and containers.

More track space means goods move faster. And sometimes freight improvements help passengers more than introducing a new express train.

If you want to check train timings in advance you can use RailMitra train schedule service to find the official train timings. This might not be the most update train timing but provides a decent overview by providing arrival timings, departure timings, halting station and halt duration in advance.

The Environment Part, Rarely Mentioned

Something unusual appeared in the briefing: the environmental benefit.

The estimate says the changes could cut:

• roughly 3 crore litres of fuel
  
• around 16 crore kg of CO₂

It makes sense. If more freight goes by electric rail instead of diesel trucks, fuel burn drops and highways breathe a little. Indian Railways usually highlights speed and capacity, not emissions, so the mention stood out.

Pune Metro Phase-2

Now, coming to Pune. The Cabinet approval adds two fresh metro stretches:

• Kharadi → Khadakwasla (full elevated route)
  
• Nal Stop → Warje (shorter elevated connector)

Pune’s traffic problem isn’t new. The city changed fast, IT parks, residential clusters, growing suburbs, but the road network didn’t expand equally. So now, signals take longer, congestion lasts longer, and commute time feels unpredictable.

Ridership projections tell the story:

• 4.09 lakh passengers per day by 2028
  
• 7 lakh per day by 2038
  
• close to 12 lakh per day by 2058

People who regularly travel through Hadapsar, Kharadi, Viman Nagar or Sinhagad Road may even say those numbers feel conservative.

Not a Flashy Announcement, But Important

Infrastructure in India doesn’t transform overnight. It shifts slowly, track by track, metro by metro, station by station. Some decisions will never trend online. And yet, they shape how travel feels years later.

These approvals won’t immediately change a morning train to CSMT or someone’s metro timing in Pune next week. But they plant the foundation for higher frequency, fewer delays and smoother logistics.

A few years from now, someone taking a train between Karjat and Mumbai or a pilgrim going toward Dwarka may not even remember this approval date. What they might notice is something simpler: The train didn’t stop between signals.