In a huge relief to local train commuters, at least 40 more trains will be added to the crowded Central Railway suburban network soon thereby increasing its carrying capacity by 1.2 lakh passengers daily.
These additional trains would start running by January end as per the recommendations of the CR committee members, Chief PRO of CR Narendra Patil said.
The recommendation forms a part of the Central Railways’ report on accidental passenger deaths which is likely to be submitted to the Railway Board next week.
“We are in the last leg of drafting the report and we are confident that we would submit it next week,” said Patil, when asked about having crossed the December 31 deadline.
However, we have already started the implementation of the recommendations made by our esteemed committee members. We are already running a train with modified seating arrangements and additionally work is on to run 40 more services at our suburban network, he said.
The CR committee comprises nine members including four MPs – Kirit Somaiya, Rajan Vichare, Poonam Mahajan and Arvind Sawant. Other members of the committee are: S K Sood, (General Manager of Central Railway), Ketan Goradia (Commuters Association), L R Nagwani (NGO), Ajoy Mehta (BMC Commissioner) and E Ravindran (Kalyan Dombivili Municipal Commissioner).
Meanwhile, the Western Railway (WR) said it has submitted its report to the Railway Board.
“We had four meetings with all our committee members. We have submitted our detailed report (on passenger deaths) to Railway Board on December 31 itself,” Chief PRO of WR Sharat Chandrayan said.
On November 28, Bhavesh Nakhate, a Dombivili resident, died after falling from an overcrowded train in neighbouring Thane district. The video of the incident went viral on social media following which Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu reviewed the situation and ordered CR and WR to set up committees to find out reasons behind such accidental deaths.
