Mumbai locals to get indicators to warn people against boarding moving trains

New Delhi: With an aim of ensuring safety in trains, the Central Railway has come out with an innovative idea of installing visual indicators in local trains for Mumbaikars. The Central Railway has installed a blue indicator light at the entrance of a suburban train coach as a pilot project to warn passengers not to board trains that are about to depart.

The decision to start the project on a pilot basis was taken after Railway Minister Piyush Goyal expressed his concern over the number of deaths caused due to passengers falling from running trains.

The blue light indicator is installed just above the entrance of one EMU coach as a warning to commuters not to board the running train, at the last moment. Unlike Metro trains or AC EMUs, which have an electronic door closer, and due to the impracticality of providing doors on non-AC EMU coaches, the blue light visual indicator is being tried at present,” an official said in a press release.

He said the indicator would switch on to warn passengers that boarding a train from thereon was unsafe, adding that the mechanism would be linked to the train guard’s beat proceed signal to the motorman .

“We will monitor the performance of the new blue light visual indicator. Based on commuter feedback, a decision will be taken on installing it in more coaches,” the official added.

The indicator mechanism was developed at Central Railway’s Kurla (car shed) under the guidance of D.K. Sharma, general manager, Central Railway.

The Mumbai suburban network, among the largest in the world with over 75 lakh daily commuters, faces a problem of people trying to board at the last moment or when the train has picked up speed while departing A stations.