More 15-car trains will result in ‘hours of delay’: Official

The new debate over increasing the capacity of the Mumbai local trains has now turned to the possibility of more 15-car trains to be run, but officials said that if these services are increased it will in fact eat into the headway (time between two services) by one-minute per service in peak hours, with a retrospective effect of trains being delayed by hours.

The on-going debate over better crowd-management was sparked off by the week-old incident of Bhavesh Nakate (21) who had fallen off the train because of overcrowding between Kopar and Diva stations during morning peak-hours.

City officials have been grappling with a huge influx of suggestions on how to manage crowds better, with one being more 15-coach services.

“We have been asked to look at all the possibilities to decrease the crowd during peak hours but for every 15-coach service a 12-car service loses around 3 minutes,” said a railway official requesting anonymity.

“To explain it in simpler terms we have to insert 15-coach services into a timetable designed for 12 coaches so we eat into 3 minutes, which in retrospect will cause a delay of hours and hours and the Mumbaikar would not tolerate this either,” he added.

Currently the Central Railway (CR) run 16 services that have 15 coaches while the Western Railway (WR) runs 30 services. This too has been done with a lot adjustments, said the official.

“If you pay close attention, the train after a 15-coach train is almost always five-minutes late than its time on the indicator. This is because the motorman, the signals and the control have to co-ordinate between themselves to run safely and without incident,” added the official.

Meanwhile on Thursday evening, the WR formed a committee on how to reduce overcrowding in suburban trains and reduce accidental deaths, following a direction from Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu.