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AC trains, e-rickshaws, app taxis, the future is coming fast

If one was to gaze through a crystal ball to find out how your railway commuting would be say a couple of decades from now, what would one find? The answer is a mixed bag. We will have new more comfortable trains, but we might have the same kind of crowds we have now. We might require less time to buy tickets, but the prices might not be the kindest on the purse.

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If one was to gaze through a crystal ball to find out how your railway commuting would be say a couple of decades from now, what would one find? The answer is a mixed bag. We will have new more comfortable trains, but we might have the same kind of crowds we have now. We might require less time to buy tickets, but the prices might not be the kindest on the purse.

A certainty is an entire new air-conditioned suburban segment. Over the next two to three years, the suburban system would be getting about 10 air-conditioned locals which will allow the railways to run around 100 such services a day on both Central and Western Railways. "It will greatly reduce the burden on the first-class segment which is increasingly getting crowded. It might even attract a fair number of private car owners," says a railway official.

Succour will however come, officials point out, when Mumbai gets the Chuchgate-Virar, CST-Panvel and the CST-Kalyan elevated railway corridors. "These will be full-fledged air-conditioned suburban systems. The Churchgate-Virar elevated corridor can reduce number of vehicular trips in the city by as much as 7.7 lakh trips every day. The CST-Panvel elevated corridor will reduce some 6 lakh vehicular trips, cumulatively saving some 60000 litres of fuel every day. In a city like Mumbai with 14 million vehicular trips now- and only expected to increase- and congested roads, these reductions are a huge bonus. The two lines between them will also reduce around 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every day," said an official.

Another major change in the future would be local trains with something called the under-slung design, a feature that allows the train's motors to be fitted underneath the coaches of the train. Currently, with four motors in every 12-coach train and five in every 15-coach train, more than one coach in a 12-coach train and almost two coaches in a 15-coach train are taken up by these motors.

"It is a waste of capacity and, in a system like Mumbai, where every bit of infrastructure has to be used to negate the massive crowds, it's completely unacceptable. It is imperative that local trains adopt a technology where their motors are arranged in the under-body of the rake, known in railway lingo as under-slung mounting. It will free up space in local train by anything between 12% and 15%," said an official.

The one thing all officials agreed was that something needed to be done about the crowding sooner than later. Figures with the railways show that a local train has a capacity to seat 1,167 people. During the normal hours of the day, the general consensus is that for every person sitting, there are about two people standing, making it a total of 2,334 standees. During dense peak, the number of standees could go up to 3,500 or even 4,500 on certain routes.

The future will also hold the promise of paperless tickets, the beginning of which has already been made with Western Railway launching a paperless mobile application-based suburban ticketing system on July 8. "This is the start. In time to come, time taken to get a ticket or season pass will be less than a minute and can be done from anywhere in the city. Even the way to check these tickets will get scientific so chances of people traveling ticket-less will be a rarity," said an official.

On the road, the advent of e-rickshaws, a process that is the in the final stages of approval in the state, will mean that people will have one more form of road transport to fall back on apart from taxis, buses and auto-rickshaws. "However with a maximum speed of 25 kilometers for an e-rickshaw, it might not be the best thing for Mumbai. The average speed of vehicles on the roads of Mumbai – already a lowly 8-15 kmph against a desirable top speed of 90kmph – will come down as e-rickshaws clog the roads," said a transport department official.

The black-and-yellow taxis will also increasingly give way to app-based transport cars which will come in with new incentives for its clientele, in the process nullifying the meter readings of the black-and-yellow fleet.

Crystal ball predictions:
1- More air-conditioned local trains with about 30 percent of all services of the day being AC ones
2- Local trains with two motormen for greater safety on the suburban system
3- A mechanism called Cab-Signaling that will allow more local trains to be run as it will replace the current stationary signaling system
4- New train design with electric motors fitted to the under-body of the train allowing for more space in the coaches
5- E-rickshaws to take over the smaller roads, giving rickshaws severe business headaches
6- App-based taxis to take over the entire upper crust office-going traveling crowd, especially in the intra-city 20km plus journey segment
7- Bigger multi-storied stations thanks to FSI of anything between 7-10

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