The Maharashtra government has proposed to the Union Ministry of Railways to allow all commuters to travel by suburban trains. The government has also written to the general managers (GMs) of Western Railway and Central Railway and proposed time slots to allow all commuters to use suburban train services
Western Railway in it’s Press Release has mentioned below :
A letter No. DMU 2020 /CR 92 /DM 1 dated 28th October, 2020 is received today from Govt of Maharashtra regarding resuming of local train services for general public while ensuring adherence to all Covid19 protocols. In order to ensure this, several time slots have been proposed by the State Govt. and also request has been made to increase the frequency of local trains to meet the demand of proposed customers. State Govt. has also requested Railways to provide inputs on the proposed schedule. It is worth mentioning that currently, Railways are running 1410 special suburban services.
As a part of the unanimously decided SOP, maximum of 700 passengers can be seated in a 12 car EMU rake as per social distancing norms against 1200 passengers who can be seated. Therefore,1410 services are run in Mumbai Suburban section, having the total carrying capacity of approx. 9,80,000. In this regard, it is clarified that Railways has always been ready to augment/enhance Suburban services keeping social distancing norms. We are working closely with Maharashtra Govt. to provide these additional services after consultation with them about necessary modalities accordingly.
But BMC has another headache on its head BMC expects the second wave of Corona to hit when Local Trains Start which also is not wrong because if trains run at maximum capacity of peak hours of 5000 passenger’s in each train, Covid 19 norms will go for a toss, let’s hope things pan out well for all when trains open up for all.