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Station and the Airport

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Written By silkboard - 23 September, 2008

BIAL Bangalore Infrastructure railways SWR Analysis amenities Mobilicity rail problems

city station 1Imagine the noise if our new international airport had no escalators to take you up from check-in area to the departure hall? 'Super shoddy', 'oh these cheapos', coin-your-expletives, or 'like our station' right? Switch over to the City station, and remember how you lugged your stuff up the stairs from the platform to the footbridge and back down again.

We can hear you say - there are porters to help. Why does the airport not save some money by arranging for 50-60 porters? Before this gets into socialism vs capitalism like arguments, analyze this.

All Bangalore stations put together may have around 300 porters (plain guess). If you'd put an escalator or elevator on every platform of city station, you are talking a dozen of them. How many people does it take to build those escalators? How many to maintain it? The whole thing put together would employ more than 300 people, and most of them would be better skilled and better paid than the porters. Talk about moving up the chain.

Oh yes, it may cost everyone a little bit of money. Though I have not done the exact numbers, I would guess that Rs 2 from every peson using the station for an year, coupled with advertising rights might suffice. Actually, what got me to write all this is a Southern Railway tender I see in newspapers today. They are selling advertising rights on exteriors of coaches. Reserve price for 4 rakes of GT Express is listed as Rs 67 lakhs for an year.

Where is all this money going? All the talk of profits, why has it not lead to visible improvements in amenities at the stations? Things have improved, yes - cleaner stations, wifi etc, slightly better coaches - but has the improvement been par for the course?

Railway adsDifference in level and standard of amenities at city's prime station, and its only airport should be a good measure of that thing called "inclusive development. How do we rate Bangalore on this front?

Not that Indian Railways is not trying. They had announced projects to modernize stations on PPP basis. New Delhi stations was to be the first one, but the tendering process there has run into some trouble.

I have no idea about the plans for City Station, have not seen any news item talking about City station modernization stand out recently.

 

COMMENTS

I don't want to be harassed

vadiraj - 23 September, 2008 - 08:49

After a long trip, the last thing I want is harassment by few people and asking for more money than the service charge. I would rather carry my bags than hand it over to someone to find out later some bags are missing. Believe me self service is the best service. I would like to have elevators in Railway Station similar to Airport though.

Praja Visit to City RS !

kbsyed61 - 23 September, 2008 - 17:37

Narayan,

Your post seems to suggest that it is time, Praja members to take a fact finding trip to city railway station to study its whole operations live and study the following:

  1. Platform ticket counters
  2. Entry and exit points
  3. Passenger drop off points
  4. Parking locations and Parking system
  5. Passenger amenities on platforms
  6. Connectivity to platforms

Hopefully after a few hours of thorough study, you should be able come up with simple, viable and easily implementable action items to make the RS more passenger friendly? I am sure the Station Manager or superintendent would be happy to host Praja members.

Syed

we should ...

narayan82 - 23 September, 2008 - 17:26

good idea KB... I can volunteer one weekend to visit any station. Maybe we can split into teams and do a report/fact finding of all the stations (City, YPR and Cantt.) And we should do it twice, once with SWR taking us through and once incognito....

Station affects the most than airport

Vasanth - 24 September, 2008 - 01:40

Station is the common place and used by one and all compared to the number of people using airport. Airports are used by VIPs and far cleaner and organized compared to Station. Some of the things that needs to be addressed earliest is the ticket counters. More ticket counters are needed compared to the number of trains that are running. If we want to see the crowd, we have to go early at 6 AM or Saturday afternoon at 1:30PM. So many train leaves Bangalore and it is very difficult to get the ticket especially from the back gate. By the time we reach counter, train would have left station. Second thing is the Underpass leading to station from KBS and the railway station compound. The jargon of passing through footover bridge within station, passing through underpass from station to KBS and again footover bridge of the KBS. This needs to be fully made footover bridge starting from station all the way to KBS joining the station footover bridge with KBS footover bridge. Footover bridges will be cleaner compared to subways because of the aeriation.Hawkers cannot stand longer due to wind and sun. Subways offer shelter for the hawkers. People can have more area in subways to litter. One can experience this by walking on subway as well as footover bridge in the railway station and see the difference.

job cuts...

narayan82 - 23 September, 2008 - 16:17

I Agree...

If the excuse SWR is giving is Loss of Jobs/Depriving people of thier jobs?.......... puhleeeessseeee! You can employ 300 of them in a much more profitable position at the same station (without much of training). How about some of these.

  • Give them a power hose and ask them to was the tracks between platforms (start from Platform 1 it will be a 12 hour shift to cover all 12 platforms!)
  • Ticket Checkers (not collectors)
  • Security
  • Customer Service.Journey Care for disabled passengers/elders?
  • Coach Cleaners?
  • Enforcers for cleanliness (making sure no one litters/spits)
  • Garderns (adding some greenery to the station)

I could go on and on.........

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