MUMBAI: The Central Railway (CR) is scrambling to enhance safety measures in the aftermath of the Mumbra train tragedy on June 9, when several commuters fell off two crowded, moving suburban local trains, taking four lives and injuring ten others.
The railway will spend ₹2.40 crore on installing grab handles near the doors of its trains – to make travelling on the footboard less perilous. The commuters who died in the June 9 accident had positioned themselves on the footboards of the moving trains, which crossed each other at a bend in the tracks, likely dislodging one or more commuters.
The additional grab handles, which will anchor commuters on the footboards, will be fixed to horizontal rods attached to the ceiling of the coaches, just inside the doors. This safety feature will be added to all the Siemens trains owned by the railway, comprising the largest number of trains in its fleet. Trains made by other companies already have these grab handles near the doors.
Of the 163 trains in its fleet, the railway operates 138 on the Main and Harbour Lines, carrying 39-40 lakh commuters daily. Of these, 113 trains have been manufactured by Siemens. The remaining trains have been made by BHEL, Bombardier Transportation and Medha. In addition, the railway runs old retrofitted trains when power upgrade from 1,500 volts DC to 25,000 volts AC.
A railway official said that to fit the additional grab handles, tenders have been floated and it will take two years to complete. “After assessing the feasibility, we installed these additional grab handles in a few cases,” said the official.
Trials were conducted at the Sanpada workshop. Each door in every coach will have four to six more grab handles. To do this, an extra rod will be installed, to which these handles will be fixed. The Siemens trains were introduced in 2007-08.
Interestingly, after the Mumbra accident, the Railway Board announced that all trains currently under production for Mumbai’s suburban railway network would be equipped with automatic door-closing mechanisms. The board said that existing rakes would be retrofitted to incorporate door-closing features to prevent passengers from travelling on footboards. Until then, commuters forced to risk their lives on the footboards of Mumbai’s notoriously overcrowded trains would have something to hold on to.
Ticket checking
As part of its ongoing initiative to curb overcrowding in its trains, the Central Railway has been conducting stringent checks for ticketless travellers inside First Class compartments during peak hours.
On Monday morning, 55 ticket checkers and seven Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel caught 106 ticketless commuters and collected fines amounting to ₹33,575. Only instances of expired monthly season tickets were checked, for which on-the-spot penalties were imposed.
As of Monday evening, data showed that the railway carried out checks inside trains departing from Thane, Titwala, Ambernath, Badlapur and Panvel stations, from 7am to 10am.