A day after the CSMT foot overbridge (FOB) collapse, railway activists have come forth saying that FOB’s in Titwala, Asangaon, Thane and Kalyan are dilapidated and need immediate attention.
“The only FOB at Titwala gets 80,000 commuters daily. On some days, the FOB sees a rush of Ganesh temple devotees, pushing the number of commuters to 1.5 lakh,” said Rajesh Ghanghav, a railway activist told Hindustan Times. According to the leading daily, FoBs at Titwala, Thane, and Kalyan were built more than 50 years ago, the one at Asangaon is more than 100 years old.
In Kalyan, the FOB is in so bad condition that passengers feel vibrations every time, a train passes from below it. The commuters at Asangoan have said that the FOBs at the station are in dangerous condition and should be built at the earliest.
Six persons were killed and 31injured after a major portion of a foot overbridge near a CSMT in south Mumbai collapsed on Thursday evening. Often referred to as the ‘Kasab bridge’, the footbridge connects the suburban and harbour line platforms of Central Railway with a narrow BT Lane exiting to the historic Azad Maidan. This was the bridge the Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab and his fidayeen partner Ismail Khan climbed to go to the Madam Cama & Albless Hospital after killing 58 people in the CSMT on the night of November 26, 2008.