Railway Budget: Puneites pray Prabhu will grant city’s wishes

The only silver lining is that the last two budgets — both tabled in 2014, one interim and one regular — promised nine new trains originating from Pune, of which five have become operational.
“We happily bought the promise made by Mamatadidi in 2009, hoping to see the state of the art facilities at our own Pune Station.

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However, budget after budget, the Pune Division has failed to get the required allocation for setting up the required facilities. The few projects sanctioned in the budgets have either failed to take off or remained stagnant for months,” said Harsha Shah of the Railway Pravasi Group.

Shah was referring to allocation of funds in the interim rail budget of 2014 for two foot-over bridges (FOBs), four escalators and a few lifts. Of these, while the actual work on one FoB has started, the progress has been slow. The other projects are yet to see the light of day.

This time, Pune commuters are hoping Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu who hails from Maharashtra will be generous to Pune.

Jaydeep More, a Shivajinagar resident who works with a private pharma company, said the rail minister should allocate enough funds for pending projects. “There are many promises about which we keep reading in newspapers. However, when it’s time to fulfill them, the rail administration keeps citing paucity of funds. Since extremely steep hikes were introduced in the last one year, it should surely have increased revenue considerably. Also several indirect fare hikes such as premium tatkal schemes are added to the revenue. Now, it’s time for railway to create new facilities and additional trains so that fare hikes can be justified. If these hikes don’t result in visible improvement in infrastructure, then commuters will oppose it,” said More.

Gulam Ai Bhaldar, an activist said, “I am sure the Railway Minister will focus on Mumbai, Konkan and Pune. Since he is from Maharashtra, we are hopeful of him being generous in allocating more funds.”

New trains ‘impractical’  

Commuters and activists demanding a host of new trains originating from the city may be disappointed, at least this year or till infrastructure at the station is improved. Local public representatives and commuter groups have demanded around 24 trains to important destinations and an increase in frequency of some trains. There has been a long-standing demand for new trains to Pune-Palitana, Pune-Porbandar, Pune-Jodhpur via Ahmedabad, Pune-Jailsalmer, Pune-Howrah via Nagpur, Pune-Manglore via Panvel, Ratnagiri and Karvar. A railway official said given the poor infrastructure at Pune Railway Station, it would be impractical to expect more services. “Presently, six platforms at Pune station handle 150 trains. Until infrastructure is expanded, running more trains is almost impossible. We are hoping to get an infrastructural boost this rail budget,” said a senior official.

Demands from pune

A separate rail zone: The demand that a separate railway zone be carved in Pune for the fast-expanding Pune city that has witnessed railway traffic increasing manifold, has not been met. Several railway officials said given the fact that the city had considerable railway infrastructure and institutes, the proposal had been under consideration at the “highest level” for several years now. “One wouldn’t be surprised if the announcement comes in this budget,” said an official. The demand of carving out “Pune Zone” out of the present Central Railway Zone picked up as the latter is one of the largest zones in central railway with an area of 3905 square km and five divisions Pune, Nagpur, Solapur, Mumbai and Bhusaval.

More locals until Metro comes: Repeated demands of commuters especially those staying in Pimpri Chinchwad and the suburbs to increase the frequency of Pune-Lonavala locals have fallen on deaf ears. Increased industrialisation and expansion of Pimpri Chinchwad  has led to the need of speedy and effective public transport for them to travel to and from Pune.“Till the city gets a metro – which could take anywhere between 5 to 15 years – we need a robust suburban service.  Apart from increasing connectivity between Pune Station and Lonavala, we need similar services on Pune-Daund line,” said Shah. Currently, 40 suburban trains in operation are used by an estimated one lakh people every day.