Mumbai: Funds of 15 crore allotted for partial AC of 78 EMU rakes

While Central and Western Railways are struggling to evince interest among Mumbaikars to travel inside air-conditioned locals; the plans of having semi-AC local trains just got a strong footing. This time in the Union Budget, there is a provision of Rs 15 crore made for the financial year 2022-23 allotted for 78 rakes. This comes at a time when last year a survey was conducted for Mumbaikars seeking their preferences for AC or partial-AC local trains.

According to senior railway officials, a provision has been made for partial AC of 78 EMU rakes for running in Mumbai that shall be retrofitted at a cost of Rs 6.5 crore. The total sanctioned cost of this conversion is Rs 507 crore out of which the proposed outlay for 2022-23 is Rs 15 crore. Incidentally, the revised outlay for 2021-22 was only Rs 1000 apportioned for these partial AC local trains.

“The plans for partial AC local trains is still underway. Now that money has been allocated, we will undoubtedly begin necessary works for the same,” said a railway official on condition of anonymity.

For the past few months, there have been discussions and deliberations over adding 6-AC coaches to 9-car non-AC train or 3-AC coaches to 12-car regular suburban train. The non-AC coaches will include the ladies compartment, another for the physically challenged and the luggage coach. The idea is that first-class passengers will upgrade to AC coaches.

The railway authorities claim that only semi AC locals will have the automatic door closing system and not the second-class compartments; the prototype will be developed accordingly. Also, there is a strong likelihood of these trains not having any first-class compartments. This comes at a time when a survey too was conducted asking Mumbaikars about their preferences for AC or semi-AC locals.

Late last year an online survey was conducted by the Railways were out of the total 37,082 respondents, 39.3 per cent -- the highest -- had shown interest in having semi-AC local trains with a combination of three AC coaches and nine non-AC coaches. Participants in the online survey included 25,339 WR commuters and 11,743 from Central Railway.

Of these 20,497 were aged 19-35 years, 14,639 from the 35-60 age group while the rest included those aged above 60 and below 18 years of age. Further, of the total 37,055 respondents who responded to the question on the class of travel in local trains; 13,622 were first-class commuters, while 21,504 commuted by the second class and the rest were those who travel by road.

For 25.7 per cent or 15,120 people, the Churchgate-Virar route was the most preferred route, followed by Churchgate-Borivli -- 9,875 responses or 16.8 per cent, while 6,734 respondents or 11.4 per cent travelled on the CSMT-Thane route. In all, 58,911 respondents stated their preferred routes of the total 12 routes mentioned in the survey.

Published on: Wednesday, February 09, 2022, 06:00 AM IST