The special committee of the Western Railway (WR) that was commissioned to decrease the number of accidents on the line has said in its report that women commuters did not respond positively to the Railways’ two-seater idea.
The report said that women commuters did not like the two-seater as part of the committee’s internal survey. “The women on the Western line have responded saying that they wouldn’t like it if the Railways changed the seating arrangement as they feel that two-seaters would be extremely uncomfortable for them,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.
According to the railway statistics, the change would increase the capacity of each compartment by 182 passengers.
Both the WR and the Central Railway (CR) had appointed a committee with representatives to ideate over what steps could be taken to curb the deaths. In fact, CR had commissioned a three-by-one, a longitudinal seating train and a two-by-two train last month. “The women feel that standing during the morning peak hours is not something they want to endure for a train journey that will take them an hour or more,” added the official.
This experiment has been re-launched for third time as the previous experiments in 1975 and 2006, when a commuter had approached the consumer court against the experiment and asked the courts to put a stop to it soon.
The CR committee report is expected to come out by January 20 and will finally be submitted to the railway ministry in Delhi, which will take a call on manufacturing the rakes.
