CR’s Parel fast train plan put on hold Punctuality of other locals at the station is the concern

CR’s Parel fast train plan put on hold

Punctuality of other locals at the station is the concern

Commuters travelling through Parel station may have no choice but to continue to endure the crushing crowds that the station sees. Central Railway (CR) officials have decided to keep on hold any plans to get some fast trains to stop at Parel’s sparsely-used platform 2, stating that such a move would delay trains during the peak morning and evening hours by more than four minutes. The station is among the fastest growing ones in CR’s suburban network, thanks to the massive office spaces being built in the areas around the station, but is slowly becoming a nightmare for urnabn commuters with police personnel and home guards having to be placed just to get the crowds to navigate through the foot-overbridge. According to CR statistics, Parel sold 21.8 lakh tickets in 2011-12, higher than the 19.8 lakh tickets in 2008. This, officials say, is a trajectory that will place Parel among the bigger stations like Dadar – which sells around 1.24 crore tickets a year – and Kurla in a matter of few years. Increasing the rush of commuters at Parel station is the fact that its sister station on the Western line – Elphinstone Road – has also been seeing a robust rise in passengers the past few years. Elphinstone station showed an increase of 114.45% passengers carrying season tickets and 69.16% increase in the total number of passengers using the station between 2004 and 2012. Speaking to DNA, CR divisional railway manager Mukesh Nigam said that getting fast trains to halt at Parel would hit punctuality of the trains and, in turn, inconvenience people during the evening and morning rush hours. “We are planning a terminal there which we believe will solve all the problems of Parel station. But for the time being, we do not have any plans to get fast trains to stop at the second platform,” Nigam said. The problem that commuters face is that the terminal plan – costing nearly Rs140 crores – would take a good part of a decade to come up.