The stampede at the overbridge leading out of Mumbai’s Elphinston Road suburban railway station has highlighted the fragility of the city’s most vital mass transit system
The stampede of suburban rail commuters at peak morning peak hour at the foot-over-bridge (FOB) leading out of Mumbai’s Elphinston Road suburban railway station on September 29, 2017 that took a toll of 23 lives besides injuries to twice as many once again brought into focus the fragility and inadequacy of transport infrastructure in, what is hailed as, India’s financial and commercial capital.
Firstly, petty politics blur real issues.Then how does one comprehend the convoluted logic by numerous worthies that country’s first belated bullet train project be scrappedIJ It does in no way dilute IR’s emphasis on safety across the existing network. If accidents on the roads occur as often as they do, we don’t halt construction of costly expressways. If a doctor in a car stuck on a flooded Mumbai road following heavy rains volitionally chooses to walk home, and, instead, most tragically, drowns in a hole in the road, you don’t red-flag exorbitantly costly transit corridors being pursued for the city.
The challenges that the city encounters are onerous. Hungry for any vacant space in the city that bursts at the seams, realty builders prowl for possibilities that may come their way. The city’s lower Parel area of old textile mills, which, with around 8m sft of office space in new swanky complex of commercial offices, malls and zooming skyscrapers harbouring luxury apartments, has now surged ahead of the Nariman Point CBD which for last over forty years came to be Mumbai’s main attraction for commercial office address.
Then it’s a familiar story of entrenched nexus between wheelers and dealers that generates realty boom in utter disregard of a holistic and systems approach for timely construction and operation of concomitant infrastructure. As more people crowd into these centres, transport for workers and residents to move freely between home, work, shopping and leisure activities, intrinsically linked with ‘liveability’, becomes a critical priority, but receives little attention. Not only Mumbai, all cities remain riddled with disparate institutions, bodies working in silos — Central and State Governments, police, municipality, water and electricity supplying agencies, roadways, railways, et al.
Mumbai city circumscribed by its geography relies on suburban rail services as no other city in the country. It would have ground to a halt without its ‘locals’ as london would without its ‘Tube’. Over about 165 years on, the city’s veritable life-line, the 465 km suburban rail network, among world’s largest, carries 7.5 million passengers everyday. Many of these trains carry ‘super dense crush load’ during peak traffic times. The rise has been exponential, from just about 50 million annual footfall in 1951 to 230 million in 1961, and an astounding 2.65 billion riders now. From 12 stations in the early 1900s, the suburban network today sprawls across 126 railway stations.
According to the enquiry committee set up by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, the Elphinston Road station FOB built in 1972 had no damage. The rapid rise in footfalls at the station to a level of 100,000 per day far exceeds its capacity. Thousands alighting from a ‘local’ rush to the FOB as at other terminals in vicinity. Transfer of passengers between Central and Western Railway trains creates a virtual mayhem during peak hour traffic.
The situation is exacerbated, as it happened on the fateful day, when a sudden downpour witnesses teeming multitudes thronging the facilities to take shelter. Moreover, movement across general public places, railway station approaches and exit points, including FOBs, gets constrained by hawkers, vendors, mendicants encroaching these public facilities.
Minister Goyal was quick to take stock of the post-incident situation. Besides making some essential ancillary infrastructure integral to safety to be mandatory and empowering zonal general managers to provide for whatever is essential for safety, he announced a slew of measures including, inter alia, installation of escalators at 93 stations and CCTV cameras on trains, widening of 13 foot overbridges at the most crowded stations, in addition to construction of 30 new FoBs. Constraints of land availability pose a challenge for extension of platforms at stations, including for adding FoBs. The Minister ordered officers/managers from the zonal and divisional offices to move to activity centres. It is advocated that railways must vigorously restore their celebrated purposeful “inspection” regime, obliging all managers to regularly visit the field and keep activity centres constantly on their radar.
Railways need to have empowered senior managers to effectively coordinate important activity centres such as large stations. There are astonishing anomalies in the context of oversight at important functional units. In Kolkata, for just 27 route km Metro system, there is a fullfledged zonal paraphernalia under a General Manager, where the workload and span of responsibility may justify no more than a divisional manager. In contrast, Central and Western Railways with far more extensive networks to manage (over 4,065 route km on Central railway; 6,440 route km on Western railway), inter alia, operate almost 100 local trains in Mumbai per hour, carrying 7.5m passenger a day against 0.5m on Metro in Kolkata.
Whereas Central Railway’s gross earnings in 2016-17 aggregated Rs 12,600 core (7.6 per cent of IR’s total) and Western railway’s Rs 11,700 crore (7.1 per cent of IR’s total), Kolkata Metro earnings in comparison amounted to a meagre Rs 215 crore, just 0.1 per cent of IR’s total! Further, it incurred working expenditure of Rs 370 crore or Rs 155 crore more than its earnings. Among the daily average of 13,300 passenger trains that IR runs, there are 5,125 suburban EMU services, 3,525 inter-city Mail & Express trains, and 4,650 regional/ordinary passenger trains. Average earning from suburban EMU services amounts to 17.73 paise per pkm (in 2015-16); inter-city Mail & Express trains yield an average earning of 31.32 paise/pkm. Even the regional short distance stopping services are big loss-making. They also erode capacity even on the busiest, saturated corridors. It is felt that for effective, quick, flexible, business-like decision-making, railways will do well to consider the desirability and efficacy of creating an autonomous entity, under its own umbrella, which, in close concert with respective State Governments and other stakeholders, manage and develop railway suburban business in the country, somewhat analogous to what Container Corporation (CONCOR) does in respect of multi-modal freight services.
One serious deleterious phenomenon that has for long harmed IR is untenable tariff structure for its passenger services, irrationally low rail fares. Average price of class II suburban rail ticket at 16.4 paise per km (in 2015-16) is ridiculously low and clearly unsustainable. Average price of ticket on countrywide State transport bus fleet is in excess of 55 paise per km. A 50 km class II rain journey ticket costs Rs 15 vs Rs 50 by bus in Delhi. likewise a 100 km rail travel costs Rs 25 against Rs 95 by bus. A monthly rail season ticket for 100 km distance for paltry Rs 355 enables unlimited number of journeys to take. Obsessed with their populist proclivity, India’s Railway Ministers, particularly in coalition Governments at the Centre, have dealt death blows to IR, their myopic policies denied the organisation even minimum wherewithal for essential maintenance of assets. Resource crunch impedes all efforts to strengthen and modernise the system.
Although, insufficient in view of the requirement, also involving cost and time over-run, several schemes to alleviate city’s transport woes have been pursued and others are on the anvil, for example, quadrupling some of the busy lines, modernising signalling, cutting the time interval between trains to three minutes from seven minutes, progressively augmenting EMU rakes from 7 and 9 to 12/15 coaches each on different lines, shifting rail terminus stations to cope with the population spurt in the city’s north.
Projects for a rapid transit system to emerge need a concerted push by the Central and State Governments, eg, underground transit system, Bandra-Virar elevated rail corridor, Virar-Vasai-Panvel suburban corridor, laying additional corridors between Kurla-Thane and Borivili-Virar, besides strengthening and modernisation of existing rail network. little attention has been paid to ensure smooth movement of commuters through entrance and exit points, adequate platform capacity, also of FOBs.
Time to procrastinate is over. Given a concerted thrust by the Governments resolutely moving in tandem, dedicated teams, when assigned the job with clear blue-print and assured flow of funds, will deliver speedily and efficiently.
(The writer is senior fellow, Asian Institute of Transport Development, and a commentator on social issues)