Mumbai : Commuters will have to deal with delayed trains on Saturdays as the Central Railway (CR) officials said that the additional two hour maintenance block started last week is an absolute necessity and will continue until it is reviewed further.
The suburban services went for a toss on November 8 when a two-hour long maintenance block was undertaken on the down line between Diva- Kalyan and Thane-Diva. Apart from the 20 scheduled cancellations, additional 18 services had to be cancelled. While another 90 trains were running with a delay of 15 to 20 minutes.
Divisional Railway Manager of CR, Mukesh Nigam, said, “We understand the commuters are getting affected. We will review and may discontinue these blocks in some time. But as of now we need to continue with these two-hour blocks to carry out the maintenance work.”
A senior official from CR said, “People travel on Saturday and full services are operated. With the block on Saturday, not only the punctuality is gone for a toss but trains have to be cancelled to avoid bunching which causes overcrowding.”
“There are several trains which originate from Thane and due to a block on the down through line between Thane and Diva the domino effect was felt throughout the day and the cancellations were more than estimated,” added the official.
The decision to take an additional block on Saturday was taken for the maintenance of tracks which were severely affected during festival season. CR had to cancel mega-block on four Sundays in August and September during the festival season.
