Mumbai: Daily Central Railway commuting turns a nightmare

Taking a local train beyond Thane gives jitters to anyone, but commuters are forced to travel inside these jam packed trains. There has been a considerable increase in number of daily commuters travelling on the Thane-Karjat/Kasara belt, making travel a nightmare.

The situation has turned so bad that the local passengers' associations are planing to stage a protest most likely in November once the the assembly elections are over.

The passengers' associations claim that the situation needs immediate attention of the authorities who need to expedite augmentation of infrastructure on this belt. Since January this year, till September there have been 575 death on tracks on this belt. In this year, several stations like Dombivali, Diva, Badlapur, Kalyan etc. have seen a rise in daily commuters. For instance Thane has seen a rise of 3.78 per cent in daily commuters travelling on the suburban system. This is an important station especially with it providing connectivity to Main and Trans-harbour lines. Other smaller stations, of Badlapur, Asangaon, Ulhasnagar, Titwala, Diva, Mumbra; which over the years have become densely populated too has seen tremendous rise in daily commuter pattern boarding and alighting from here.

The Central Railway officials attribute this surge in people staying in far suburbs for crowded local trains between Thane-Kalyan/Karjat/Kasara stretch. With Mumbai getting costlier by the day; these towns in far suburbs have become attractive with cheaper real estate and houses due to which people are flocking there.

"The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) has not been completing work on the Thane-Diva 5-6 rail lines for a decade now. Everyday 20-25 services are getting cancelled as the rail network has saturated. We are tired of the prevailing situation and so have decided to go on a protest from November for which we will be sending our demands to the rail authorities as well," said Nandkumar Deshmukh, president, Federation of Suburban Railway Passengers Association.

The passengers want the railways to finish work on the 5-6 rail lines on Thane-Diva route, run 15-car trains especially during peak hours to and from Badlapur, Titwala and other suburbs where daily passenger count is high. The work on Kalyan remodelling is also pending for long, which will ideally segregate train traffic towards Karjat and Kasara that enter Kalyan.

Daily Passengers