Seawood-Uran line work leaves commuters fuming

Mumbai: Cancelled trains, crowd, lack of announcements are already the signs of a bad weekend for Harbour line commuters who saw the first day of the four day work undertaken for the Seawoods-Uran line. The fourth and the last day will  be on the Christmas day with services beginning only at 4.00 pm

Due to many services getting cancelled from heavy loading stations like Belapur and Vashi, commuters were hit and ended up waiting at stations for more than 20 minutes as the Central Railway (CR) grappled to handle the peak hour frequency and rush.

The problem was limited to a slight delay and cancelled service during afternoon but morning and evening trains saw a bad mix of trains felt some commuters. Deepti Khera (26) a social worker who was traveling from Kharghar to South Mumbai said that there was a little lack of information as many of the commuters did not know that the CR had made any such plan in the first place,.

Many people in interim stations like Juinagar, Nerul and Sampada often take originating trains to CSMT from Belapur or Vashi. One such passenger is Shrutika Maheshwari (25) who came down to Belapur to catch a train, soon realizing that these trains were limited, she said, “I catch Belapur originating trains and have a little more flexible work timings so I pick and choose according to the rush, but today upon reaching Belapur from Nerul I was told that there is some work going on and which is why there are no originating trains at all.” She further added, “Then someone said they are running the Belapur trains but they are very few of them, I ended up on the station until 25 minutes and just took an Uber to office instead.”

A total of more than 120 trains were cancelled said officials, but the extra 100 trains were of moderate help as many commutes plan their commuter according to the timetable which was temporarily suspended.