Pune Shivajinagar ST Bus Station

The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation and Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation have entered into an agreement to rebuild the Shivajinagar ST bus station in Pune.

The pact was signed at Sahyadri Guest House in Mumbai, with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and State Transport Minister and MSRTC Chairman Pratap Sarnaik present.

The new hub, pegged at Rs. 8.25 bn, is meant to handle more than 100,000 commuters daily and will combine bus operations, commuter facilities and commercial space in one layout spread over several floors. Ground level will hold passenger services, the floor above will handle bus movement, and the remaining floors above that will be opened up for commercial use.

Maha-Metro will handle project execution while private players will be brought in for construction and commercial development, under a public-private partnership model that the state Cabinet has already approved. Officials expect tenders to go out starting next month, and building work is projected to run for roughly three to four years, though the Cabinet has noted that the actual schedule will hinge on how execution proceeds.

Since December 2019, the original Shivajinagar terminal has been out of use, moved roughly 1.5 km away to a temporary site in Wakdewadi so that work could proceed on an underground Pune Metro station, forcing commuters to travel the extra distance for years.

Rebuilding on the original spot and linking it directly with the metro network is intended to cut that daily inconvenience and bring ST services back closer to where they used to operate, while also adding commercial space at a key Pune location.

Maha-Metro, which already manages metro work in Nagpur and Pune, the Thane Integral Ring Metro project, and running Navi Mumbai Metro Line 1, will supervise the Shivajinagar redevelopment going forward.

With tenders due to open next month, the construction phase that follows is projected to last about three to four years, though the final completion date is not fixed.