Commuter organisations and commuters have suggested a range of workable solutions to cut down crowding and make the daily commute easier in Mumbai locals.
Commuter organisations and commuters have suggested a range of workable solutions to cut down crowding and make the daily commute easier on Mumbai’s suburban railways in the given set of infrastructure.
Re-space signals, expand vertically and cyclic timetables are some of the suggestions railway officials have been getting.
A senior official said they had been flooded with ideas from the city’s seven million commuters. “Many ideas are practical and can be implemented, some are complicated and many others are only suggestions. We go through each of them carefully and document them so that they can be used for future references,” he added.
Deepak Gandhi of Mumbai Suburban Railway Passengers’ Association has proposed a cyclic timetable. “A cyclic time table is the one that repeats itself after a fixed duration. Commuters will only need to remember that in a cyclic timetable, a train repeats itself after a set time. If the cycle time is 12 minutes, and if someone has missed a train, they know that they have to wait for a maximum of 12 minutes to catch the next train,” said architect Jagdeep Desai of the Forum for Improving Quality of Life in Mumbai Suburbs.
“The benefits include about 30% more services with the same number of trains and tracks, 30 to 40% decrease in overcrowding and 20 to 25% saving travel time with punctuality,” Desai said.
Another commuter Sunil Ahya said his RTI query revealed that Mumbai railways could be transformed into a world-class system without spending much money.
“To increase the capacity, one has to either expand horizontally, vertically or tweak the existing infrastructure for optimal use. A report prepared by a Hong Kong-based consultant has suggested the frequency of suburban trains can be increased by up to 40% by just changing the signaling systems of the suburban rail network,” he said.
“The study was done by MTR Hong Kong for the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation. The report titled ‘Communication Based Train Control’ states that during the peak hour, five more trains could be introduced by changing the signaling system to cab signaling,”
Trains with better acceleration and braking capabilities to reduce the time a train occupies the station while entering and exiting.
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