Suburban Trains Likely to Resume in Mumbai This Week!

Mumbai Locals are the lifeline of the city. But, this lifeline is on halt since 23rd March with the commencement of Lockdown – 1 due to Coronavirus. The city is starting to unlock after Unlock – 1 and ‘Mission Begin Again’. However, the suburban trains are still on break and people are eagerly waiting for it to start.

In our earlier article, Maharashtra is Already Facing Shortage Of ICUs and Ventilators – Where Are We heading?, we already expressed the willingness of Maharasthra Government to restart the operations of Suburban Trains. It is now going towards in the direction of restarting the suburban trains.

Due to the non-functionality of suburban trains, the emergency workers engaged in essential services are facing a lot of challenges while commuting from one place to another. Mumbai metropolitan constitutes outer areas of Thane, Palghar, Mulund, Malad, and Ghatkopar. All these regions are far away from the main city.

The state government is eager to resolve these challenges. On Saturday, the Central Railway had a discussion on how the suburban trains can be put into place. Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) of Central Railways Shalabh Goel said on this matter,

“There was no written communication from railway board.”

Today, there is a meeting with the operations department to finalize the social distancing norms. Earlier on Saturday, the ticket checkers are informed to report on the duty with QR scanners on their smartphones. The plan of the board is to not charge any money from the essential service workers.

Instead, they will be given QR code on their ID card. Besides that, there will be multiple rounds of checking to ensure that this service is available only for emergency service workers. Apart from that, the ticket checking staff will also wear PPE kits.

The government has guided the offices to keep the timing as per the trains to ensure that there is no crowding at the stations. Even the capacity of a coach will be 700, instead of normal 1200. It is quite noteworthy that during lockdown 3.75 lakh workers were using the bus facility.

When Mumbai is expecting 1 lakh corona cases by June- End, is it a wise decision? What is your opinion?