Habour line services were delayed by over one and a half hours as Vadala Road station, which was seeing 15 services per hour was unable to handle the influx of services, leading to overcrowded station
Habour line services were delayed by over one and a half hours as Vadala Road station, which was seeing 15 services per hour was unable to handle the influx of services, leading to overcrowded stations and overcharging of uninformed commuters by taxi drivers outside the station. The chaos was seen on the second day of the Harbour block as services ran up to only Vadala Road instead of CST on Saturday.
Officials said they had to finally reduce the number of services to and from Vadala Road from 15 to 10 per hour by evening. “In the morning, trains were delayed by more than an hour because we had kept 15 services from Panvel to Vadala Road, since the latter is not equipped to handle originating and terminating services like CST. So we decreased this number to 10 services in an hour so that the trains were not delayed as a result of bunching up one behind the other,” said an official.
Commuters who travelled on stations up to Vadala Road complained that the Central Railway could have run some extra services as the trains were delayed by an hour, due to which travelling within Navi Mumbai itself proved be a strenuous task.
Deepti Khera (26), a social worker who wanted to travel from Kharghar to Vashi with her family said they didn’t get into three trains as they were overflowing. “We were left as early as 10 am but trains were late by an hour, finally we took autorickshaws which caused us to shell out Rs 250 instead of the usual Rs 120,” she said.
Some commuters who were unaware of the block said they had to get down at Vadala Road and make their way back to Kurla. Shalini More said she wanted to make her way to Sewri. “The indicator kept showing VD (Vadala Road), I asked a fellow commuter who said it will go to CST so I got in. When the train terminated at Vadala another women told me there was a block. If the man at the ticket counter had told me about it, I would have shifted at Kurla and got down at Parel. There wasn’t even a board about the block at the counter,” she said.
Passengers outside Vadala station were also being fleeced by taxi drivers. When this reporter asked one why he was charging as much as Rs 100 to go to Dadar he said, “We are not overcharging, commuters themselves are saying that they would pay Rs 100 so why should we say no ” he asked.
