FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
Sathappan Narayanan
The year 2020 is a special year that first time in my life I stayed in Chennai continuously for 365 days - thanks to Covid-19 triggered travel embargo! After a lapse of one full year, recently I did travel by train from Chennai to my native town — of course with all sorts of precautions like mask, sanitizer, personal bedding, etc.
Yes, railways are the important mode of transport for us that it is the fourth-largest national railway network in the world, with more than 1.227 million employees as of March 2019. Government of India has recently focused on improving the railways. This includes electrification of the entire IR network by 2023, new trains that can operate on existing rail infrastructure at 200 km/h, and new high speed railways that can operate at speeds in excess of 300 km/h. Kudos to GOI. Running such a mammoth organisation is not an easy task. It requires complete co-operation of employees and as well passengers. Committed workforce with passion can satisfy ever increasing and ever changing customer demands. Passengers are also equally responsible to maintain coaches by responsible, proper and minimum use of services provided in the moving train.
Here I would like to talk about the ease of reaching their trains from the time passengers arrive station by road. In station like Chennai Central where most of the rail lines are originating, all the platforms are accessible by just walking to the particular platform. In other midway stations, mostly first platform only accessible by walk and all other platforms necessitate climbing stairs.
This is where aged and children facing problems and if suppose their train arrives in wee hours or on a rainy day, then the difficulty multi-folds. With nil porter service or non availability of porters in wee hours, the sufferings of poor old passengers need to be seen to believe. These hardships can be reduced if those employees manning those stations show empathy to passengers and put in intelligent service to ensure arrival and departure of as many trains possible in first platform.
This thought of platform woes came to my mind from my own experience of arriving in wee hours at Karaikudi Junction. In that station Pallavan super fast express occupies platform No 1 from the time it arrives at 11.00 hrs to next morning it departs at 05.00 hours, making those passengers of other trains arriving or departing between 11pm to 5 am — a whole 6 hours of every day to climb stairs with their luggages or cross the rails dangerously. Rather than parking Pallavan express in first platform, parking it on side lines platform and bring it to first platform just half an hour before departure will be a welcome gesture for relieving undue stress of unlucky passengers of those 6 hours.
Though I mentioned about Karaikudi junction, chances are, in other stations too passengers may encounter such issues and getting used to the practice of fitness work out in stations! Will those responsible come out with a plan of action to lift the standard of passengers comfort a bid more — if not to international standard?
