Every day, more than 80 lakh people commute using Mumbai’s suburban network. A report published by Mumbai Railway Police has stated that more than 2,500 people die in Mumbai because of railway accidents and over 3,000 are injured annually. Mumbai locals are considered to be the lifeline of Mumbai. The report gathered by Mumbai’s Railway Police Commissionerate in 2019 stated that as many as 2,691 people lost their lives and 3,198 sustained injuries on the suburban network last year.
The Economic Survey of India, quoting figures from the Railway police stated that in 2017 there were 3,014 deaths and 3,345 injuries compared to which the rail network recorded 2,981 deaths and 3,349 cases of injuries in 2018, 2700 cases of death were reported in 2019. The causes of these deaths comprise of line crossing, falling in gaps, falling from the train, hitting railway poles, electric shocks, suicides among others. The numbers of accidents have come down after the Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) started running awareness campaigns.
Apart from announcements in the local trains and sensitising on safety, various measures have been taken to prevent accidents like the construction of overbridges, subways and walls to control trespassing and sealing of trespassing points and shifting of poles. The rail network is spread across six lines covering 390 odd kms and 157 stations in the Mumbai metropolitan region. The CR and WR collectively run 3,029 services daily. Meanwhile, the Railways have also constructed a wall on either side of the railway tracks to curb trespassing of railway tracks. So far, the Corporation has finished the construction of 113.15 kms of the wall out of the proposed 130 km-long wall. This year, the Central Railway constructed 17.25 kms of the wall while the work for another 27.5 km is in progress. On the other hand, the railways has also constructed 79 foot-over bridges in the last five years and the work for 24 other bridges is ongoing.
