WHY SUBURBAN TRAINS NEED DOORS

Will Prevent Footboarding, But Officials Say Option Not Feasible In Overcrowded Coaches

Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com 26.07.2018

Four footboard commuters dying under the wheels of a suburban train at St Thomas Mount station after falling off the train has made a case for automatic doors on EMUs.

Automatic doors — like those in metro rail coaches — will prevent commuters from footboarding and hence falling. The technology has been available with the railways but senior officials said “practical considerations” have made it a nonstarter.

The Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai already manufactures automatic doors for suburban trains that are air-conditioned. One such train runs in Mumbai and around 40 more rakes are set to be manufactured. “The door costs between ₹5 lakh and ₹6 lakh while the wiring and the automatic system will cost another ₹3 lakh per coach. The driver will get an indication when the doors are closed,” said a senior official from ICF. Currently, it takes ₹3.5 crore to manufacture a coach so the additional cost for an automatic door would be minimal. ICF can also retrofit the automatic doors in existing coaches.

However, suburban trains run at “dense crush load”. In Mumbai, an EMU coach designed for 80 people carries at least 500 during peak hours.

“It is a given that there will be footboard travellers and hence we will not be able to implement automatic doors in suburban trains,” said a senior railways official who has seen train operations from close quarters. The automatic doors will not work because commuters will block its operation by dangling from the footboard. This is the reason why the sole AC rake in Mumbai runs during non-peak hours, the official said.

Railways officials said that by limiting passenger load in coaches, losses would go up. Suburban corridors in Chennai are loss-making divisions, managing to recover only 50% of cost. Individual divisions don’t have freedom to fix ticket prices for it is a political hot-potato handled by railway ministry. “Hence, any such infrastructure investment in suburban trains is not seen in a positive light,” the official said.

But nothing is costlier than lives and automatic doors can be implemented in interests of passenger safety, said K Baskar, member of Divisional Rail Users Consultative Committee (DRUCC) in Chennai. “That said, a more practical solution will be to run more suburban services,” he said.



POSTMORTEM:

Chief planning & design engineer A K Sinha (left) and commissioner of railway safety K A Manoharan at the accident site on Wednesday

Railways cancels ‘fast’ locals, commuters fume
Chennai:

From Wednesday, suburban commuters on the Chennai Beach-Tambaram-Chengalpet section will not get the time advantage of 20-30 minutes by taking a ‘fast’ local train.

After the accident on Tuesday, the Chennai division of Southern Railway has decided to run all fast locals on the slow line, meaning the trains will stop at every station. An order was issued by T P Singh, senior divisional operations manager, on Tuesday. The move has been criticised by railway commuters and officials as a “kneejerk reaction”. “Why should railways stop running services just because of an accident. Two extra tracks created for this will not be utilised. It’s a waste of public money,” said Sridhar Joshi, a regular commuter.

Divisional Railway Manager Naveen Gulati told TOI that the railways was inspecting infrastructure of ‘fast’ line platforms at all stations. Asked if it was a tacit admission of infringements on these lines, he replied in the negative.

“Footboarders with shoulder bags travelling in unsafe manner get hit by poles or other structures which are within the safety parameters. So till we review the structures, this order will be in force,” Gulati said.