Railway Ballast Depot at Hoige Bazaar Sparks Traffic and Safety Concerns Among Mangaluru Residents

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Mangaluru : Local commuters and residents living near Pandeshwar and Hoige Bazaar are facing renewed distress as Southern Railway prepares to set up a Railway Ballast Depot at the former Goods Shed yard near Nireshwalya. The area already suffers from severe traffic congestion due to frequent level crossing closures caused by passing and stabling trains. Citizens now fear that the heavy movement of ballast hopper trains and storage activities will further choke local roads, stalling long-pending proposals to widen the Pandeshwar stretch and hand over the land to the district administration.

A ballast depot serves as a primary logistics hub where machine-crushed stones are stacked, quality-tested, and loaded onto specialized hopper trains for railway track construction and maintenance across the network. To facilitate this heavy transport, the project involves laying dedicated siding tracks and building specialized loading infrastructure within the yard, which will increase railway traffic right through the heart of these densely populated neighborhood roads.

Preliminary site preparation is already underway at the vast port-adjacent premises, where old, abandoned goods warehouses are being demolished and thick overgrown vegetation is being cleared to level the ground. Ever since the goods shed was shifted to Ullal in 2022, locals had hoped the vacant railway property would be repurposed for civic infrastructure. However, with Southern Railway pushing ahead with the ballast depot unit, residents and students are left bracing for increased daily disruption.