Shyam G. Menon

"It's tough going for Mumbai's commuters, despite the city's much touted resilience."

TEST OF RESILIENCE: The common sight of commuters struggling to board the train at Goregoan station to get to their offices. - Paul Noronha

Mumbai , Aug. 10

THE sad thing about this city is that its famous resilience is now taken for granted. It is expected to work come rain or shine. So few elsewhere spare a thought for how people have been reaching their offices in the days after July 26 and its floods.

Several suburban trains and thousands of vehicles, among them city buses, had got damaged in the torrential rains. According to Railway officials, 157 rakes were being used for the suburban railway system here, rated the world's busiest. Of that, 75 rakes were damaged in the floods — 26 from Western Railway and 49 from Central Railway.

This was besides the damage to tracks. The Railways has been trying to restore normalcy but the repair of rakes and restoration of lines take time. A typical rake accommodates 1,800-2,000 commuters; Mumbai's locals were known for as many as 5,000-5,500 commuters jammed into that space. As the city recovered to its regular north-sought commuting pattern, the partial availability of rakes meant heavy, almost unbearable crowding in trains during peak hours.

Contacted on Wednesday , a spokesperson for Western Railway said that 907 schedules from the line's regular menu of 1,007 schedules had been restored. However, only 109-200 twelve-coach rake services were running as against the normal complement of 407 such schedules.

On the brighter side, the Western Railway had only seven rakes remaining to be repaired from the damaged 26. The full line from Churchgate to Virar and beyond to Dahanu had opened from 9.45 p.m. on July 27.

The Central Railway's battle was tougher. On a normal day, it has 1,203 services, including 21 12-coach schedules. By Tuesday, 1,138 services were back on track. While the number of 12-coach rakes restored could not be immediately given, 82 rakes were operating out of Central Railway's regular fleet of 94.

However, unlike that of Western, the Central Railway's entire suburban line was not yet open. While the route to Karjat was fully functional, track restoration work was still on between Kalyan and Titwala stations on the Kasara line.

To cater to the traffic, authorities were plying shuttle services using rakes made of long distance coaches from Mumbai CST to Kalyan. These trains can take up to 2,500 people, which is more than a local train's capacity. There were no services between Kalyan and Titwala but trains were running from Titwala to Kasara.

For people routinely boarding trains from beyond Kalyan on the Kasara line, commuting was genuinely hard. According to those reaching South Mumbai offices, three-wheelers bridged the missing link from Titwala to Kalyan; a seat on one of those vehicles came for Rs 40. In the days just after the rains, it was reportedly Rs 80.

While the Central Railway claimed that the city's third line, Harbour Line, was back on schedule, trains to Vasi and Panvel remained crowded. The line draws services from both Western and Central and the former confirmed that only about 85 schedules from its normal quota of 100 for Harbour had been restored.

As commuting continues to be tough, the belief at least on Western line was that services would become normal by August 25 or so.

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