Indian Railway finds fault with closed-doors system plan in Mumbai locals

To prevent commuters from falling off moving local trains and travelling dangerously by standing on footboards, the Indian railways has been testing the workability of automatic sliding doors, popularly called as ‘closed doors’ in local trains. However, now, it has been decided to shut the doors on the ‘closed doors’ system.

The Western Railway was conducting trials in the second class ladies compartment of only one train. Senior officials from WR said that they have been testing it for several months now. Over a period of time, it has become obvious that the plan has serious flaws, including door’s opening and closing on time, poor ventilation inside, among others.

Despite there being forced ventilation inside coaches, it becomes suffocating during peak hours when more than 16 commuters per square metre travel per coach.

As many as 654 people died after falling off from moving trains on both WR and CR in 2017, while 1,434 people were injured. Last year, 3,014 people died on rail premises, which is around 8 persons per day. A local train has a capacity to seat nearly 1,167 people and when we take those who stand into consideration, it goes up to 2,334 people. The peak hours are referred to as Super Dense Crush Load, where carrying capacity of a train goes up to 4,500 commuters.

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“The Railway Board is not keen on taking this project ahead. Moreover, additional number of air conditioned local trains will be introduced into the system slowly,” said a senior railway official.

As per plan, the railways will be getting nine AC locals by March 2019. Three more AC locals will be manufactured, taking the total number of AC locals to 12. Apart from these, the Railway Ministry is also planning to go for 72 trains, which will have six AC coaches, while the remaining will be non-AC.

Source: DNA