It's time railway commuters were better behaved

This is an ongoing month-long campaign which has an outreach to more than two million commuters. The modus operandi is though directly approaching railway commuters and through passenger associations, school children, college students

The Central Railway's RPF Mumbai division has launched a mammoth public awareness campaign called 'My Left is My Right — Please Keep Left' to create awareness among railway commuters about maintaining lane discipline.

This is an ongoing month-long campaign which has an outreach to more than two million commuters. The modus operandi is though directly approaching railway commuters and through passenger associations, school children, college students.

This campaign aims to urge the passengers to follow the sign of 'please keep left' and keep lines to avoid stampedes, pick-pocketing and straight out theft. It will also help to discourage passengers from boarding/deboarding running trains minimising injuries and deaths.

The initiative is a much-needed one on our stations and platforms. They are particularly perilous in the monsoon. One cannot help think that so many tragedies that have occurred at our stations could have been easily avoided if commuters had been disciplined and orderly.

Running pell-mell to catch trains, shoving and pushing people out of the way, deliberately crashing into people, walking too close to the trains though there is a yellow line telling you to stay behind, are unfortunately commonplace on our platforms. We need to do some soul searching as a city. Instead of blaming authorities and this is not to say that they are never to blame, should commuters themselves be better behaved?

They surely should. It is for these reasons that the paper is in whole-hearted support of the 'please keep left' message. We also hope it will sustain instead of petering out in one month. Anything that reduces the hardship of commuters and makes our public space safer is necessary and should be supported. More strength to this and may it really hit the spot.

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