Here is good news for over 65,000 people using air conditioned local train services running in the suburban section of Mumbai. Keeping in mind the rising number of passengers in the air conditioned local trains both zonal railways are planning to increase the number of air-conditioned (AC) services shortly.
Currently 56 air conditioned local services are running on the central railways suburban section and 32 on western railways.
According to sources in WR, they will be adding these services on the Churchgate-Virar route in the next month . “As per plan we will get one more air conditioned rake by the end of this month, after that we will increase 8 to 10 more AC services somewhere in July 2022," said G V L Satya Kumar, Divisional Railway Manager of western railways Mumbai central division. Similarly, Shivaji Sutar, chief public relation officer of central railway said, "We are planning to introduce around ten more air conditioned local services in next month." The central railway is also expecting one more air conditioned rake by the end of this month.
This comes at a time when fares for AC local trains were halved and passenger demand is rising. In the month of May, 11,17,809 passengers used the air conditioned local trains of western railway with daily average of 36,058 passnergs. Similarly, 96,30,68 passnergs used air conditioned local trains of central railway with daily average of 31,066 passangers in the month of may 2022.
During the month of May, card tickets sales of AC local trains in the central railway suburban section increased by over 300 percent as compared to the month of April and 235 percent on western railway.
"We are working on the time table for propsosed air conditioned local trains which is yet to be finalised but tentatively out of these proposed services half will be introduced during rush hours' ' said CR officials.
Similarly western railways are also working on introducing a few more AC local services during rush hours in next months.
Mansoor Umer Darvesh, Secretary of Welfare Organisations and Road safety and Prevention Accidents said, "It will definitely prove helpful to the thousands of travellers of air conditioned local trains of the city. Time table of the proposed air conditioned local trains services should be convenient for the users"
"We passengers will welcome an increase in frequency of AC Services but first of all CR should resolve these problems of genuine passengers by rationalising the Time Table of AC services and running them at specific frequency 20 minutes between every service in peak hours.
One such example is 07:47 Dombivli CSMT slow AC local service which was hit but CR cancelled, we are hoping that while preparing time table for prolapsed AC local services, concerned authorities will keep in mind the above issue" said Sriram Iyer , frequent users of CRs air-conditioned local train services
