Ara railway station to be made terminal

Kumar Rajiv Nayan

Ara : Ara, an `A’ grade railway station under Danapur division of East Central Railway (ECR), is just next to Patna  Junction in the matter of revenue generation. The number of passengers starting journey from Ara increased five times while its revenue increased six times in 2016 compared to 2015 despite the fact that several premier trains do not stop at Ara railway station. As a result, Ara railway station will be made a terminal and almost all the trains passing through Ara will stop here.

At least 15,000 daily passengers travel daily from Ara to different stations and general and reservation tickets of Rs 4 crore were books per month in 2015-2016 while Rs 1 crore was collected from freight. But, Ara railway station still lacks ticket booking counters resulting in long queue of passengers for tickets. Sometimes, the passengers are forced  to travel without tickets as they could not get tickets due to long queue. The Ara railway station has two foot overbridges and work on escalator is going on at the platform no 1 at the station. Ara railway station does not have a health centre while Buxar that yields less revenue than Ara has one.

A number of premier trains do not stop at Ara though people are demanding stoppage of Howrah-Haridwar Upasana Express, Archana Express, Sampoorn Kranti Express, Rajdhani Express, Patna-Indore Express, Ananya Express, Vikramshila Express, Bhagalpur-Ajmer Express here. It also lacks long sheds at the platforms.Display boards never display information. Heaps of filth and garbage are seen in the circulating area of Ara railway station. Illegal parking and encroachment are also a big problem at Ara railway station.

DRM R K Jha said that Ara railway station will soon get facelift and process has been started to declare Ara railway station terminal. He said work on construction of platform and foot over bridge is going on. Tender has been published for the over bridge across the eastern railway crossing.