Mumbai Railway offices shift north to reduce burden on trains

Railway officials said they could eventually schedule suburban trains based on the staggered office timings and civic ward-wise working population to reduce the burden on trains even more. File pic/Bipin Kokate

Charity begins at home! The Mumbai railway offices are moving northwards to decongest their own trains. While the Mumbai division of the Western Railway on Monday said they were setting up their satellite headquarter offices in the suburbs starting at Virar, followed by Santacruz and Bandra, the Central Railway's Mumbai division said they were also exploring the possibility of setting up such offices at Kalyan and Thane.

This will be the railways' contribution towards reducing the burden on Mumbai's local trains.

More than staggered timings, the move by Mumbai division of both the railways to decentralise their headquarters will prove to be helpful even in the long run.

While the Central Railway has its own employee special local trains, the Western Railway does not have any such train. A top official said employees from all departments staying close-by can access these offices, instead of travelling all the way to south Mumbai, where both the headquarters are located.

While the Mumbai division of Western Railway has its office at Mumbai Central, the Mumbai division office of Central Railway is located at Mumbai CSMT.

As reported by mid-day in its August 26 edition, the WR and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have also been working on staggered office timing and schedule local trains in sync with it.

Railway officials said they could eventually schedule suburban trains based on the staggered office timings and civic ward-wise working population. The idea is to map out which office in which civic ward works at what timing. For example, Mantralya will work at a particular shift, the WR divisional office at a different timing.

Also Read: Mumbai: Western Railway adds six more services, two will be ladies specials

"The QR code system is a boon in disguise. It is already building an excellent database of workers that is giving us a rough data of which office has what load and how many people. After the mapping is done and load distribution assessed, we can get a fair idea of the staggered timings and accordingly sync the suburban services," said an official.

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