Article: Passengers banned from Indian train roofs

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Passengers banned from Indian train roofs


http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2010/02/18/1225831/656958-crowded-trains.jpg
Trains will stop running if "even a single person" is seen travelling on the roof.  Source: AP 

Passengers banned from Indian train roofs

    * Rhys Blakely
    * From: Times Online
    * February 18, 2010 9:51AM

THE sight of intrepid travellers perched on top of trains has become one of the enduring images of India. Now the health and safety lobby is to end such death-defying commutes.

Before the end of the month Western Railway, one of the government-owned groups that runs Mumbai's local railway network, has pledged that its trains will stop running if "even a single person" is seen travelling on the roof.

The crackdown, which will coincide with the introduction of more powerful overhead cables, will be implemented on February 28 and the authorities are bracing themselves for disruption.

"We know that halting a train during peak hours will result in a lot of chaos. However, we cannot let people travel this way as they will surely lose their lives," a railway spokesman told The Times of India.

Similar moves are expected across the country when the Railways Ministry presses ahead with ambitious upgrade plans, under which it also hopes to lay about 25,000km of track and kit out trains with modern facilities such as wi-fi.

Nowhere is the need for safety awareness greater than in India's commercial capital. In Mumbai commuters can often be spotted on top of carriages, sitting cross-legged and serene only feet from electric wires. Many of them are avoiding buying tickets, which cost only a few rupees.

Such practices have helped to make the railway network one of the deadliest in the world: a record 17 people died every weekday on the city's suburban railway network in 2008.

The figures, which were obtained for The Times using India's Right to Information Act, show that most deaths were people being run over while trespassing on the tracks. The next biggest cause of death - equivalent to more than three every working day - was of passengers who fell (or were pushed) from carriages that travel at 64km/h, have no doors and are often dangerously full.

Another 41 people perished after being bludgeoned by trackside poles while hanging out of overcrowded trains. Twenty-one were electrocuted by power cables when they sat on the roof.

The level of congestion on the roads means that the attractions of the trains outweigh the dangers, commuters say. "A 45-minute train journey across town can easily take more than two hours by car," Indranil Mukherjee, a photographer, said. "Yes, you will see the occasional dead body but a three-month unlimited pass only costs about 1,500 rupees."

Visitors are advised to ignore the cavalier attitudes of the locals and to treat the railway with respect. It carries seven million people a day and is a third more densely packed than Tokyo's famously congested equivalent. Officials have coined the term "super-dense crushload" to describe how 550 commuters are regularly crammed into a carriage built for 200.

In the crush fatal accidents are expected. Many railway stations in Mumbai do not have properly stocked first-aid kits but do have sheets to cover corpses.

The Times