Mumbai: Railways says no rollback of public access to local trains

Passengers arrive at Dadar station on February 12. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

The railways on Monday said that there was no proposal or plans to rollback public access to Mumbai local train services, but given the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, promised to step up vigilance protocols of sanitisation of trains and touch points at stations. Also, there will not be any relaxation in the time restrictions on access to local trains.

While 503 cases were detected in the city on February 3 (three days after the resumption of local trains), 550 and 510 people tested positive for the deadly virus on February 10 and 11 respectively.

Amravati, Nagpur, Pune and other cities in Maharashtra are also reporting a significant rise in the number of cases. Passenger associations blasted the authorities and said that it was the responsibility of the government to provide a safe and healthy public transport. "Does the novel Coronavirus spread only through local trains? But there should be proper crowd control and medical safety protocols in place. We had appealed to the railways to provide sanitiser machines at gates and other such measures," a passenger association member, Vandana Sonawane, said.

"It is just two weeks since the trains began and it cannot be stated for sure that cases have been rising solely because of this. We will have to wait for at least one more week for results to emerge. Also, one has to note that COVID-19 cases are on the rise in other cities of Maharashtra where local trains do not ply. Hence, one cannot immediately blame local trains," a senior railway official said.

Mumbai local trains opened after a gap of 10 months with time restrictions for the general public, available in three time slots - from the start of the services to 7 am; 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm; and 9:00 pm to the end of the day. It was on March 22, 2020 midnight that for the first time in history, the lifeline of Mumbai, its passenger trains were completely shut for eight days to start with in an unprecedented lockdown. The lockdown on public access to local trains remained till February 1.

22 March
Day in 2020 local trains were shut down