There’s more leg room in city’s lifeline More than seven million passengers take the suburban trains daily. But have you noticed that the crowd in each coach has been thinning over time? Thank the additional and faster services for this trend,

There’s more leg room in city’s lifeline

More than seven million passengers take the suburban trains daily. But have you noticed that the crowd in each coach has been thinning over time? Thank the additional and faster services for this trend,

If you’ve been avoiding taking the city’s local trains fearing that you won’t have even elbow room, this should goad you into taking a trip. Although the number of passengers on Mumbai’s suburban trains has been steadily going north, the crowding pattern is nosediving. “Yes, it’s official. Our annual studies show that though the number of passengers has increased by a lakh in a year, the crowding pattern, that is, the number of passengers per coach on locals of Central Railway (CR) as well as Western Railway (WR) has been on the decline,” says a senior official from the commercial department. Simply put, there are fewer persons per coach, thereby allowing more breathing and moving space. On the right track Take the case of CR services. Their numbers went up from 1,216 in 2006-07 (with 33.5 lakh passengers) to 1,578 in 2011-12 (with 38.3 lakh commuters). The respective crowding patterns, though, dropped from 289 people per coach to 226. The WR went toe-to-toe with the Central line trend. Its services went up from 1,043 in 2006-07 (with 31.4 lakh passengers) to 1,250 in 2011-12 (with 34.8 lakh passengers). The number of people per coach dropped from 288 to 241. “Though the reductions are marginal, they offer a ray of hope, as they show that we are moving in the right direction. We increased services to cut down crowds and the latest studies prove that we are on the right path,” beams the commercial department official. What has changed? Railway authorities should take a bow. They have been tackling the growing numbers of commuters by putting to use the additional coaches procured under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project. Besides, the changeover from DC (direct current) to AC (alternating current) and the conversion of nine-car trains into 12-car ones have increased the passenger capacity of each train by 33%. While the CR has completed the conversion of all nine-car locals on the main line, the WR and the Harbour line are in still in the process of doing so. The WR has another card up its sleeve: 15-car trains, which offer about 66% more capacity over a nine-car local. Passengers offer solutions Commuter organisations and passengers in the city, too, have come up with various suggestions to take on the crowds. “A cyclic timetable is a solution (to overcrowding). It is a schedule that is repeated after a fixed duration. Commuters will only need to remember that time slot. Say, the cycle repeats itself every 12 minutes. If someone misses a train, he/she will have to wait for a maximum of 12 minutes to catch the next train,” Deepak Gandhi of the Mumbai Suburban Railway Passengers’ Association had recently suggested in a letter to the railways. He went on to say that this will lead to a 30% jump in the number of services, will decrease crowd strength by 30-40% and will save 20-25% of travel time, besides ensuring punctuality in the locals’ arrival and departure schedules. A commuter, Sunil Ahya, came up with another suggestion: that by simply changing over to cab signalling, the capacity of the city’s suburban railways can be increased by 40%. Another passenger, Ketan Goradia, had recently suggested a circular railway line connecting CST and Churchgate and an elevated line to segregate rail traffic. “This will cost only about Rs3,000 crore and can provide the same additional capacity that the ambitious Rs40,000-crore elevated railways project is aiming at. Besides, while the elevated railway project will take 10 years to be implemented, this circular railway line can be finished in just two years and it will increase the capacity from the present 70 lakh passengers to 120 lakh passengers per day.” The circular network connecting the WR and the CR aims at creating two dedicated fast local tracks - one running clockwise and the other, anti-clockwise between Virar and Kalyan. Goradia has also come up with a tentative train timetable of 360 services for these tracks. Among themselves, the CR, the WR and the Harbour line can have as many as 3,500 services, which again trumps the proposed elevated railway project that will offer not more than 2,500 services.