Title - State slams CR for last week’s mega-block chaos,

The state government on Monday issued a terse warning to Central Railway authorities to ensure better coordination with various agencies during megablocks, and make sure commuters aren’t inconvenienced as they have been over the last 10 days.

Last weekend’s unusually large megablock on the main line of Central Railway (CR) went down as one of the worst infrastructure failures in the city, with services restored only six days after they were scheduled to be normalised. On December 31, three men were killed and two suffered grievous injuries after falling off overcrowded trains.

The three who died fell between Ghatkopar and Vikhroli, while the two injured were found on tracks near Diva railway station. Until 5 pm on Monday, 180 trains had been cancelled, most of them during peak hours. In all, there were five deaths on Central Railway last week.

While authorities finally got that situation under control, on Monday a couple of technical snag left commuters hassled yet again. First, a pantograph on a goods train from Trombay to Bhigvan developed a snag, leading to delays of half-an-hour for fast trains. Then, a CST-bound Kasara local was stranded at Diva for over 45 minutes, throwing evening rush hour traffic out of gear.

Until two years ago, the state government’s disaster management and emergency committee was headed by the additional chief secretary (home), who used to coordinate with the BEST to add feeder buses to make up for any problems with train services.

Control of the committee has been handed over to the municipal commissioner since, and after last week’s chaos, sources said that State-run bodies such as the Railways refused to coordinate with the BMC. For example, they pointed out, when CR decided to remodel the Thane yard and undertake electrical - which led to the inordinately long megablock -- the BMC commissioner, BEST and MSRTC were not even informed.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had taken up the matter with top Central Railway officials on Thursday - the fifth day of the megablock when 12 trains were cancelled. CR officials had had promised a speedy resolution then.

On Monday, the chief secretary Jayant Banthia summoned the Central Railway General Manager Subodh Jain, divisional railway manager Mukesh Nigam and Western Railway General Manager Mahesh Kumar and instructed them to inform all relevant agencies about future megablocks. He also told them to ensure they used all means of communication - from newspaper advertisements to radio to SMS - to inform commuters about planned works.

‘Travelling has become a nightmare’

There really seems to be no respite for Central Railway (CR) commuters. Days after the mega-long megablock finally came to an end, a couple of technical snags threw services out of gear on Monday.

At noon, the pantograph of a goods train from Trombay to Bhigvan developed a snag at Thane, stalling train movement in both directions. “The locomotive blocked fast train movement both towards CST and Kalyan. One suburban local and three long distance trains were delayed due to this, while two trains - one in each direction - had to be diverted on to the slow tracks,” a Central Railway official said.

While the official said that regular service had been restored by 1 pm, commuters we spoke to insisted there were delays on both the slow and fast tracks until at least 2.30 pm. They said that platforms were overcrowded, and many of them were forced to walk on the tracks.

Meanwhile, at around 3pm, a CST bound Kasara local was stranded at Diva for over 45 minutes, affecting the evening rush-hour commute.

“The pantograph got entangled, and was cleared by 4.30 pm, but trains were running 20 minutes late,” an official said, insisting there were no issues during peak hours. Rajesh Singh, a Kalyan resident, said, “It’s been eight days now and there are no signs of these delays ending.

Travelling has become a nightmare. Not only are we getting to work and back home more than an hour late, the trains are overcrowded all the time.”