Everything’s riding on luck on harbour line

“It’s so difficult to ply trains here that we work on luck everyday,” says RS Kohli General Secretary of the Motormen’s association. There are 25,150 slums on CR,and between CST-Mankhurd and CST-Mahim 7,800 are in the critical 10-metre safety zone on either side of the railway line as prescribed by railway safety regulations. “But if I went by the book, I wouldn’t be allowing harbour line services to run for even a day,” confessed a senior CR official. Weekly cautionary notices handed out by CR to its motormen attribute the speed restrictions of between 20 and 30 kmph to poor drainage due to hutments, decayed wooden sleepers, night soil and poor drainage.

But motormen say actual speeds are inversely proportional to the number of people crossing the tracks and the motorman’s fear of running them over. “It’s like driving through any part of a busy city,” says motorman CK Dubey.

The railways’ right of way has become a bit of a joke here. People defecate, marry, screen films, celebrate festivals and worship their gods — right on the tracks. Mini shopping centres, clinics, slaughter houses and temples are within handshaking distance as are the people that usethem. In fact, a World Bank team visiting this section last year threw up their hands and asked the railways to delink harbour line resettlement from the MUTP project.

A 29 km journey from Churchgate to Malad takes 45 minutes on the western line, but an equidistant journey between CST and Vashi would take a little over an hour with timesaving. A CR official says that minus encroachments, Central Railways could run additional 80 harbour line services, increasing them from the present 427 to 500. To illustrate, the journey time from Khandeshwar to CST presently takes a hour and a half. Without slums, the journey can be done in an hour. “What’s more, with the time saved, we can also withdraw two rakes for use on the main line,” he said.

So, when Central Railway’s GM wrote a letter to the chief secretary in July stating that he would have to contemplate suspending services on the Wadala-Mahim section of the harbour line, he was only venting his frustration at the present state of affairs. The Commissionerfor Railway Safety (Central Circle) SC Gupta fully supports the GM on the warning. “The right message has to be sent out to the state government that such a situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

Nearly a year ago, Gupta had written a letter to CR authorities stating that he would be forced to suspend services if nothing was done about encroachments on railway tracks. However, the railway is fighting a losing battle against rapidly proliferating slums. Since last October, it has demolished over 12,000 hutments but has found most of them coming back with greater vigour, Gupta says. Rehabilitating hutment dwellers residing in this 10 metre safety zone alone would cost the railways Rs 400 crore and the process hasn’t even begun yet. But the jokes have, and one of them says how the railways could build a separate section bypassing this section, with the staggering cost rehabilitation would entail.

SPEED RESTRICTIONS AND REASONS

Decayed wooden sleeper

poor drainage, hutments

same as above

same as above

same as above

night soil, poor drainage

poor drainage