Mumbai : While the Railway Budget has gone about talking on mega projects in the city such as the elevated rail corridors, regular commuters have said that the daily issues that they face while travelling have been totally ignored in the budget.
Rail activists and regular commuters have pointed out that there are some basic facilities like better medical help at railway stations, more number of train services, cleanliness around the station area and better security arrangements. These are the low hanging fruits, the kind of facilities that can easily be provided by the railways, and yet these have been consistently ignored.
Activist Samir Zhaveri, who has been fighting a long battle for providing better facilities for the commuters, said that instead of talking about these grand plans, the railway minister should focus on basic issues like overcrowding. “What people want is that they should be able to travel on the local trains without having to go through the daily torture,” he said. In this regard, there was no new announcement for starting new trains or new facilities for the public.
Another serious problem the commuters face is accidents that happen when people fall off the trains and suffer serious injuries, the activist said. Again, the railways have not provided medical facilities at many stations and it takes a long time to move an injured person to a hospital, Zhaveri said.
Another activist, Subhash Gupta, said that there are at least 10-12 deaths that take place on the tracks and this issue needs to be given serious consideration by the railways. “We had also hoped that there would be some new trains and new services announced for the suburban route, but this was not done,” he added. But like the previous budget, nothing new has been given for the Mumbai commuters, which has a huge number of people travelling in the local trains.
Rishi Agarwal from the Observers and Research Foundation said that even the most basic plans like the extension of the harbour line to Goregaon and then up to Borivali has not taken place. “Having a third line from Bandra to Borivali would greatly help in reducing the load on the existing services and make travel safer for the commuters,” he pointed out.
According to Hina Sharma, a student of SNDT College, Malad, and who is a regular commuter, there is an urgent need to have more coaches for female commuters, since there are more people travelling these days. “Along with increasing total number of coaches in a train, there should also be a corresponding increase in the compartments given for female commuters,” she said.
Also, there should be more ticket windows provided for the commuters, since the commuters have to often stand in long queues.”At a place like Malad station, the queue goes right up to the main road and people have to stand in the hot sun,” she said.
