CR, WR form 13 teams for safety audit of Mumbai stations

The Elphinstone Road stampede has finally forced authorities to carry out safety audits at Mumbai's railway stations. Now, 13 teams from the Central and Western Railways, civic bodies and the police have reportedly begun safety audits of more than 100 railway stations on Mumbai's suburban network.

In the aftermath of Friday's tragedy at the Elphinstone Road station, which resulted in the death of 23 people, railway minister Piyush Goyal had convened marathon meetings of officials of the Central and Western Railways on 29 and 30 September and had directed both the zonal railways to form multi-disciplinary bodies and conduct safety audits of the suburban railway stations within 10 days.

According to officials, the teams will inspect every station during peak hours to understand the safety issues.

The Central Railway has formed eight multi-disciplinary teams for inspecting its 76 suburban stations on the main, harbour and trans-harbour corridors while the Western Railway has formed five teams that will assess passenger safety at all stations between Churchgate and Dahanu Road.

The audit teams comprise railway officials from various departments such as commercial, operating, electric and mechanical, along with officials from the city police, government railway police and local municipal bodies, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Thane Municipal Corporation, among others, Ravinder Goyal, divisional railway manager of CR's Mumbai division, said.

''The multidisciplinary teams will visit all stations during peak hours,'' said Goyal. ''They will check foot overbridges, hawkers, platform width, staircases and their width during their inspection and submit their report within a week.''

Mukul Jain, divisional railway manager of WR's Mumbai division said they have formed five multidisciplinary audit teams and they will submit their report within five days. The teams have been instructed to study the stations during the peak-hour rush.

Besides submitting its audit report to the zonal railways, the teams would suggest solutions such as whether the entry-exit points of stations need to be widened or cleared, whether new FOBs are required or existing ones need to be widened, or more personnel from the Railway Protection ?Force (RPF) or Government Railway Police (GRP) are needed.

''Now, general managers have been given powers to spend for safety whenever necessary. If the teams suggest some urgent measures at any stations in their report, the railways could immediately start work after determining the urgency of the work. As of now, there is no need to go to railway board for approval of the same,'' said the official.

Meanwhile, immediately after the tragedy, the railway authorities have announced the floating of a tender to build an additional foot-over-bridge at the Elphinstone Station.

The move is a classic example of the way the railway bureaucracy functions.

The new foot-over-bridge (FOB) will connect Parel Station on the Central Railway (CR) and Elphinstone Road Station on the Western Railway (WR).

Commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu, who was railway minister until 3 September, said his ministry had sanctioned the construction of the new FOB as far back as in 2015, but it failed to materialize.

''The lackadaisical working of the railway administration is responsible for the tragedy,'' Prabhu stated after the stampede on Friday.

Prabhu said he had approved Rs11.86 crore for the construction of a 12-meter-wide and 10 meter-long FOB on 23 April 2015. ''Had the administration cleared the proposal in time, issued the tender and appointed a contractor, this incident wouldn't have happened and innocent lives would not have been lost,'' the statement added.