Title - Shorter CST-Panvel ride by April 2013

MUMBAI: The plan of Central Railway (CR) to reduce the commuting time between CST and Panvel will roll out by April 2013.

According to officials, plans are afoot to attach an additional motor coach to the existing 9-car trains to increase the speed on this route. Currently, the travel time between the two destinations is 77 minutes.

The additional motor coach will cut the travel time by 10 minutes. "An extra motor coach will increase a rake's power capacity by 33% enabling it to run faster," said a CR senior official. "In the first phase, the plan is to extend the length of platforms (to accommodate 10-car trains) by March 2013," said CR general manager Subodh Jain. Trials will be conducted and an approval of the Commissioner of Railway Safety will be sought to run 10-car services, which may be introduced by April 15, 2013.

"Initially, we aim to run at least 30 to 40 % of the services the extra coach. These services will ply the CST-Panvel route and not the CST-Andheri to Panvel-Andheri corridor," Jain added. Currently, Harbour line trains can reach a maximum speed of 50 kmph, although they are permitted to travel at 75 kmph. "The close proximity of stations entail frequent deceleration. Moreover, the presence of level-crossing gates and sharing of tracks with goods trains hinder speed," said a CR official. The frequency of services on Harbour line is 5 minutes as compared to 4 minutes on the Main line.

CR plans to carry out trials at the speed of 80 kmph and 100 kmph with older and new purple-white rakes respectively.

CR uses 26 rakes to run 188 CST-Panvel, 79 CST-Belapur and 67 CST-Vashi services on Harbour line.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation officials held a meeting with their CR counterparts to chalk out a plan to extend platforms and other ancillary works to operate 12-car services on Harbour line. "The 12-car project is expected to be completed by December 2014," MRVC managing director Rakesh Saksena said.