Title - Fast Track to Thane

With 6.5 lakh daily passengers, Thane, now the busiest station on Mumbai's rail network, is also a pointer to the new contours of the megapolis

A train rattles to a halt, pouring out a multitude at the Thane railway station. It is Monday evening, and most people are returning home, from workplaces and colleges, cafes and theatres, all veterans of the evening crush of Mumbai's 'locals'. On the platform, there seems to be little space to walk, but no one really slows down, as they are carried onwards by the crowd. This is the busiest railway station on Mumbai's suburban railway system, with 6.5 lakh daily passengers.A survey released by the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) last fortnight revealed that Thane had left behind stations like Dadar and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on the central line, and Borivali and Andheri on the western line, which have for long being known as the most crowded.Every day, over 1,000 trains stop at Thane, which has 10 platforms and 22 entry and exit points.  It is a picture of functioning chaos, like many other stations. An escalator is being installed, while the metal detectors and luggage scanner stand inert, ignored by most on their way out. A tide of people clogs the narrow staircases in minutes, leading to more jangled nerves.

Thane is a part of Indian rail lore, the starting station on its 160-year-old journey. On April 16, 1853, it became the first railway station in the Indian subcontinent to receive the first train run by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway. But this most recent attribute also points to the new contours of land-locked Mumbai. Over the last two decades, as property prices spiralled in the island city, people in search of affordable living and commercial spaces have moved to suburbs like Thane. According to the 2011 census, Thane's population was 1.1 crore, a 36 per cent rise from 2001.Finance manager Dinshoo E Mehta settled in Thane in 1994, when it was an outback of the metropolis. He takes the train to CST every day on his way to work.  "Over the years, there has been a growth in residential areas in Thane. Though there has been an increase in the number of services, the station has not kept up. The main bottleneck here continues to be the narrow staircases," he says. Given the rise in the footfall, Mukesh Nigam, divisional railway manager, Central Railway, knows there ought to be better facilities. "It has become a residential and commercial hub. It is definitely one of our most important stations."

Shilpa Kulkarni, a 28-year-old clinical data manager, who shifted from Sion to Thane 13 years ago, believes the margins of Mumbai have expanded to include Thane. "You can no longer think of it as a place outside Mumbai. But in 1993, when I moved here, I was in a state of shock.  I found it quite backward. Over a period of time, I have seen Thane grow. Many residential spaces have been added. Every arterial road has a mall. Thane looks like a city now," she says.

While Thane has grown swiftly, railway authorities have not kept up, feels Bhushan Shinde, who teaches at a college in Chembur. "Thane was the first to have an industrial centre in Maharashtra. There are many IT parks now in the city. Business always heralds the arrival of people in an area. However, the local transport in Thane is still bad," he says. Most daily commuters complain of inadequate facilities at the station, from the lack of toilets to the complete traffic mess outside it, contributed by the presence of vendors and autorickshaws. But they line up every day, braving the crowd, for a ride on the lifeline of their city.