Decreased travel time will be the biggest gain from the conversion of Direct Current (DC) to Alternate Current (AC) for Harbour line commuters. However, it’s not yet time to rejoice. The 12-coach trains that will be soon introduced by the Central Railway (CR) on this line will eat into the cushion time between services.
The Harbour line, which was converted from 1,500 volts DC to 25,000 volts AC on April 10, will be unable to reap the benefits of the work as much as CR’s CST to Karjat/Kasara route did. The mainline, which was converted to AC in June last year has improved its running time on the fast lines between Kalyan-CST and Thane-CST by 14 and eight minutes respectively, and the slow corridors on the same section has seen an improvement by 10 and six minutes as well.
This improvement has been brought about by running the train at a speed of 100 kmph in sections between Kalyan, Thane, Diva and Mumbra, among others.
However, officials have said that even if the Harbour line’s speed is accelerated to 100 kmph between Mankhurd and Panvel, the time-gain will be nullified by the 12-coach trains that will be introduced at the end of the month.
“Unlike the Harbour line, the mainline was already running the 12-coach trains before it was converted to AC. So when we finally did switch over to the AC system on the mainline, we did not have to keep a special cushion time between services to absorb the impact of 12-coaches. In fact, we could increase the speed in certain sections and therefore decrease the time it takes for a person to travel from Thane or Kalyan to CST,” an official said on condition of anonymity.
However, the time taken for a commuter to travel from Panvel to CST will more or less remain the same. “We hope that even though the travel time will not decrease, the commuters on the Harbour line will be happy as the 12-coach trains will drastically improve the issue of over-crowding. Also, another advantage will be that with the additional three coaches, one more ladies compartment will be added to the existing two compartments for women,” the official added.
