Title - Mega blocks need better planning

6 January 2013

The last three days of 2012 and the first three days of the New Year were horrendous for millions of commuters travelling on the suburban corridor of Central Railway, thanks to the inept handling of a major operation to ‘modernise’ Thane railway station. At least three persons were killed after they fell off over-crowded trains on New Year’s eve, and thousands suffered because of the lack of announcements about the delays in the running of trains. Every day, about 10 commuters get killed on Mumbai’s suburban railway corridors, either falling off trains, or being run over along the tracks.

Central Railway, which operates suburban services that run for nearly a hundred kilometres from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) — to points in the north, east and south of the metropolis — decided to carry out ‘a mega block’ over the last weekend of 2012.

‘Mega blocks’ — when services are stopped for a few hours over the weekends to enable emergency and routine maintenance works on the tracks — have become more frequent on the suburban corridors because of the enormous amount of work involving laying of new tracks, changing the signalling equipment and other such activities.

But the recent one near Thane station was a major operation and the Central Railway authorities apparently did not realise the associated problems. There were two mega blocks of 12 and 16 hours each on December 29 and 31, respectively, aimed at remodelling the yard outside Thane to ensure faster movement of trains.

More than 40 new signals were installed to ensure that trains move smoothly; however, the motormen were not adequately briefed about the positioning of the signals, with the result that most of them moved at slow speeds.

Consequently, for almost a week millions of hassled Central Railway commuters had to resign themselves to inordinate delays, cancellations and over-crowded trains. The two suburban railway corridors of Mumbai ferry almost seven million commuters daily, the highest anywhere in the world.

Interestingly, the Bombay-Thane stretch of Central Railway is the oldest railway line in the sub-continent; the first train chugged out of VT station on April 16, 1853, and covered the 35km distance to Thane. This is also one of the busiest railway corridors in the country — and also the most neglected.

Last week’s disastrous implementation of modernisation of Thane station and yard has resulted in the commissioner of railway safety directing the authorities to conduct a probe into the fiasco. But what worries the millions of commuters in Mumbai is the ambitious plan of Indian Railways to construct an elevated railway corridor — costing a whopping Rs200 billion — on the Western Railway over the existing lines. If the project is implemented in an equally ham-handed manner, as happened last week, it may well be a nightmarish experience that they would prefer not to encounter.