The trains out of Mumbai are running full while the stations and terminus are crowded with passengers waiting on the concourse and station premises. But the big question is how many passengers are actually leaving Mumbai. The Western Railway (WR) has been keeping a tab on not just the trains and passengers travelling in them but also the wait listed travelers hoping to get a seat to head back to their native places.
There are 19,313 passengers on the waiting list from April 10 to 30 in Mumbai division of Western Railway whose jurisdiction is till Surat. Of them, there are 12,886 passengers who are departing from different stations of Mumbai like Mumbai Central, Bandra Terminus, Dadar and Borivali.
“We are running many special and summer special trains. We are monitoring the waitlisted passenger list based on which these special trains will be announced and run,” said Alok Kansal, General Manager, WR.
As per the figures collated by the WR authorities, there are 127 journeys comprising of different trains departing from April 10 till the end of this month. Of these, 75 journeys of trains depart from Bandra Terminus and remaining four from Dadar and Mumbai Central. Most of these trains are towards Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Bhagalpur, Guwahati, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Chhapra among many other towns and cities.
The average number of waitlisted passengers who want to depart from Mumbai is 163 per train, while that in the entire division which also includes Udhna, Surat as well is 152 waitlisted passengers. The WR has already operated 266 express long distance trains in the last 3-4 months of which 116 of them are north bound.
The WR added 575 coaches to clear the rush. They have also announced 14 Special trains of which 4 trains have already been approved. There are 36 summer special trains that will run weekly and bi-weekly till June. Over the past few days, the crowds at stations have gone up considerably. Passengers are coming to station 4-6 hours before time of departure owing to the lockdown from 8pm onwards.
To manage this crowd the WR administration asked its Officers to personally monitor the situation. A letter was shot by the Divisional Railway Manager on April 8 mentioning about the heavy rush observed in trains originating and passing through. 'Officers deployed at the stations should pro-actively assess the emerging situation and escalate issues for resolution before a potential adverse situation arises' reads the Note on Crowd management at sensitive stations.
