Dinesh Kamath's news item '12-car rakes will bring relief to Navi Mumbai railway commuters' that was published in Newsband

12-car rakes will bring relief to Navi Mumbai railway commuters

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: It will take a still longer time for the first local train with a 12-car rake to CST to make its appearance. The problems of Navi Mumbai railway commuters are increasing day by day and the Central Railway (CR) is not able to come up with immediate solutions to their problems.

The monsoon is now a thing of past and hence the work on 12-car services has resumed. The project costs more than Rs 700 crore. Once this project becomes a reality it will be possible for the trains on the CST-Panvel and CST-Andheri lines to carry more passengers. How soon the project will become a reality depends on Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) which has set December 2015 as the deadline for the project.

The work on 12-car rake is in progress. The work, in fact, is still at the initial stage and there is a long way to go before the project gets completed. Heavy rains during the past few months had slowed down the pace of work.

At present we have 9-car rakes running on the Harbour line and this can accommodate only 1750 passenger. The 12-car rakes will be in a position to carry 2,300 commuters.

The workers who are chosen for this project are finding it a challenging job. They have to take care to see that the rail traffic is not disturbed while they are working on this project. To have 12-car rakes operating, the railway authorities will need to make the platform longer, improve the yard at CST and work on signals and overhead wires.

It took such a long time for the railways to start working on the project because they first had to wait for the funds to be sanctioned and next a long time was spent on deciding as to whom to award the contract to work on this project. Finally the work started last December.

City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) and The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will share half the cost for the CST-Panvel and CST-Andheri routes respectively..

The 12-car rakes will have more coaches and hence this will tackle the problem of rise in number of commuters travelling along the Harbour Line. At present the frequency of the trains along the Harbour line is poor and also the trains are found overcrowded especially during the peak hours. The introduction of 12-car rakes will solve both these problems.

Once the 12-car rakes get introduced, the city commuters are bound to heave a sigh of relief.

Introducing 12-car rakes on Harbour line is a great idea and the railway platforms are being made compatible with the 12-car rakes.

Technical experts feel the railways will be able to complete the exercise in three years. The total number of services on CR is 1573 that also includes 208 services on Thane-Vashi-Nerul-Panvel route (trans-Harbour line). As many as 580 services ply the Harbour line route, of which 172 services operate between CST and Andheri.

The Central Railway (CR) administration has already converted all its 785 services on the Main line to 12-car and increased the passenger-carrying capacity per train by 33%. There has been a gradual increase in passengers on the Harbour line after the services were extended up to Panvel. The growth in the Vashi-Panvel belt due to the Navi Mumbai international airport will increase the load per train.

The concept plan approved is according to the annual growth of passengers along a particular line.

The CST-Panvel high speed corridor, when introduced, will provide connectivity between south Mumbai and the international airport at Navi Mumbai.

The starting of 12-car services on this line is the need of hour as the areas on this line are developing at a fast rate. Cities like Panvel, Kharghar and Belapur have developed at a very fast pace. With increasing urbanisation, the population also has been rapidly increasing.

Plus, introducing fast train on these services has still not been conceptualised and introducing 12-car train services was the only option to meet the growing demands of this area.

For a long time, commuters travelling on the Harbour line and Trans-Harbour line have been complaining of step-motherly treatment by the Railways. Several commuters would lament that despite registering a massive growth in terms of population and passenger density, the stretch connecting the satellite city to Thane, Mumbai and even the western suburbs has never got substantial financial aids or infrastructure.

But now everything seems to be going according to plan In the near future, it is expected that the commuters from Navi Mumbai will enjoy the comforts of rail in the real sense.

It is clear that the railway authorities have trained their sights on the Harbour line and Navi Mumbai for initiating developmental works that include a fast corridor till Panvel, increasing the carrying capacity of trains (running 12-car trains), installing a train management system, running new age AC-DC rakes on the stretch etc.

The development of the Harbour line connecting the Western suburbs and Navi Mumbai has pleased the city commuters.

Fast corridor on Harbour line from Mumbai CST to Panvel will need the quadrupling of the lines between the stretch, and this will allow trains to move at a faster speed and also increase the carrying capacity.

Today the railways run only slow trains on the single pair of tracks between the two cities. The city commuters are still forced to endure an arduous travel to and from Navi Mumbai by slow trains. When the 9-car rakes get converted into 12-car ones all services on the stretch will be running with 12-car rakes.

Don’t be surprised if in the future the entire stretch is converted into AC from the existing DC and then there will be a likelihood of shortening the travel time between the destinations, Thane-Panvel, Panvel-Wadala-Mumbai CST.

Today, an average Navi Mumbaikar spends at least a few minutes more commuting every day, thanks to the absence of the Siemens rakes that run faster than the conventional ones. Today, the indicators on most stretches of the Harbour line don’t work. Even the announcements aren’t made regularly, leaving the commuters confused about arrivals and departures of trains. Currently, the Harbour line runs only up to Andheri although there are plans to extend the service up to Goregaon in MUTP.

There is all the likelihood of all these scenarios changing in the near future when 12-car rakes are introduced.