Central Railway (CR) commuters should brace themselves for delays over the next few days as overuse of level crossing (LC) gates in suburbs such as Kalwa, Kalyan, Diva, Thakurli and Badlapur owing to Ganesh immersion processions are expected to hit punctuality of services. Officials said that the cascading effect of delay in Thane-Kalyan services would eventually cause delays in CST-Thane and other services as well. Officials further said that they expected a drop in punctuality on these days by a good five to seven per cent, including on Sunday, Monday, and again on September 11 and 12 when the next batch of Ganpati immersions took place.
Even on normal days, LC gates had become one of the biggest impediments to punctuality. And during the Ganesh festival, the need to keep these gates open for longer than usual in the evening due to Ganpati immersion processions crossing over from one side to the other meant an additional delay of 10 to 13 minutes per service.
“The LC gates that are the most troublesome lie between Thane and Kalyan and severely impact services. For example, a train headed from CST to Kalyan will be delayed as a result of the gates and will be sent back from Kalyan to CST or Kurla and will be further delayed and so on and so forth,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
Trains headed to far-off suburbs i.e. Kalyan to Karjat or Kasara would also be affected as a result. “Trains that come from Thane or Kalyan and go towards Karjat or Kasara also end up getting affected. All services are linked to each other and a cascading effect further takes down punctuality,” said the official.
While CR otherwise maintains, on an average, a punctuality of 85 per cent every day, this slips to anywhere between 78 to 80 per cent during the Ganesh festival which is one of the largest festivals in both Mumbai and Maharashtra.
Railway police has already been deployed at all these gates after the five-hour rail roko at Badlapur on August 12 which threw CR services into disarray for the entire day.
Officials said that they did not want to take the risk of a similar incident occurring and as a result, had deployed 100 personnel at these LC gates.
