Garbage on tracks eats into punctuality of trains

Mumbai: Before complaining about crawling trains and delayed services, commuters would do well to know the reason behind the same. The railway places stringent speed restrictions on sections with heaps of waste and this eats into nearly 10 per cent of train punctuality every month. This year itself, Central Railway (CR) has cleared 75,000 cubic metres of muck and garbage that was dumped on the railway tracks.

With the railway implementing speeds as low as 30 kilometres per hour at Byculla, CST, Thane-Parsik Tunnel, Kanjurmarg, Vikhroli, Vadala, Sandhurst and Raoli, CR services which otherwise run at speeds of 65 kilometre per hour have been crippled.A railway official, on condition of anonymity, said, “If the wheels of the train run over garbage at very high speeds, there is always the possibility of them getting stuck or coming off the track altogether. Though the situation may not be severe enough to cause derailment, re-railing wheels takes several hours which in turn translates into loss of hundreds of services.”

Rail Pravasi Sangh member Subhash Gupta said that many railway activists had been trying to educate people against littering on tracks. “If 42 lakh people throw one chocolate wrapper each on the railway track every day, you can imagine how much garbage that alone will create. Also, railway workers who pick up garbage from the tracks during peak hours are risking their lives with trains running at three to four minute intervals because of the overwhelming amount of garbage they have to pick up,” he said.

Mr Gupta added that slum dwellers living next to tracks were responsible for the filth to a great extent. “Politicians also let these people stay next to the tracks illegally as they form big vote banks during elections. So, the political leadership also needs to realise that they must provide for these people to get rid of their garbage in a sanitised manner,” he said.

CR divisional railway manager Ravindra Goyal said, “Yes, our punctuality is severely affected as a result of speed restrictions that we are forced to implement the move across Mumbai suburban. We can only hope commuters take it upon themselves to stop littering and allow us to run trains to the maximum capacity”.