As restrictions are being eased the daily passenger count is increasing. To address this issue, the Western Railway is now planning to upgrade 27 of its services from 12-car to 15-car. This would mean that the capacity would augment by 25 percent in these train services where 3-coaches are being added.
At present there are around 28-30 lakh daily passengers travelling on the Churchgate-Dahanu route on both slow and fast corridors of Western Railway. Although only fully vaccinated can travel in public transport, the Maharashtra government has eased restrictions on other avenues be it visiting restaurants, offices and workplaces, cinema halls and theatres, gyms, marriage and other activities at 100 percent.
"We are working out on our timetable wherein we would be able to convert 12-car into 15-car in at least 27 services. On a broader scale, it will take total 15-car services from 79 to 106," said a senior Western Railway official.
There are currently running 79 services of 15-car that namely run on Andheri-Virar corridor as WR authorities have extended the platform length for accomodating longer trains. Sources said that after the upgradation of these 27 services, they expect additional carrying capacity of atleast 500-700 passengers or more during peak hours in a 15-car train.
Currently the WR authorities are operating 1375 services and this augmentation might broadly increase an one more service to the system taking it to 1376 services. Transport experts on Indian Railways like Subhash Gupta who is also the president of Rail Yatri Parishad feels that the stations between Andheri and Virar cater to almost 65-70 percent of the total daily passengers and so this amplification in carrying capacity is a welcome move.
