Mumbai: Will decongest CR stations, says new divisional railway manager

R K Goyal at his first media briefing on Thursday

New manager, new promises. R K Goyal, who was appointed divisional railway manager of the Mumbai division of Central Railway (CR) last month, in his first media briefing on Thursday said he had many ideas to improve the network and that he was looking at decongesting stations as his first priority. "There are many unnecessary things and stalls on crowded narrow island platforms that we will see if can remove. We can also look at widening platforms by shifting tracks wherever possible," Goyal said.

He added that improvement was a continuous process, and the decongestion of stations would begin at Thane and Kalyan stations. "Kalyan station's platforms 2 and 3, as well as platforms 5 and 6 of Thane station are in the initial phase of decongestion. We have already begun the process of shifting trains. Eighteen pairs of long-distance trains have already been moved to other platforms, and ten more pairs of long-distance trains currently handled by platforms 5 and 6 of Thane station will be shifted to platforms 7 and 8 soon to make room for suburban passengers," he said.

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"As promised after my arrival, I have restored the Neral-Matheran services in October," he added. Speaking about the glitches in Yatri app in the live-tracking of trains, he said that Artificial Intelligence cameras and software were used to pick up trains in the car shed for maintenance during tracking, but there were improvements now and that live-tracking of all trains was back on track.

Goyal, a 1991-batch officer of the Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers, said that his priority in Mumbai would be to bring down the number of railway-related deaths. He added that he could see scope for increasing passenger amenities at suburban stations.

Locals run late

Local train services on all fast suburban corridors of Western Railway were delayed on Friday morning because of an operational snag. "Due to a technical problem, all up and down fast suburban locals are running late by 15-20 minutes," an official said. A Western Railway spokesperson said that six local trains were cancelled, while at least 70 were delayed. The glitch also had a cascading effect on six long-distance trains that were delayed by about 30 minutes, he added.

70
No of local trains delayed on Friday morning on WR