One of the long-standing complaints about the suburban railway network in Mumbai, which ferries nearly 7.5 million commuters every day and is verily the lifeline of the city, is that decisions are taken by bureaucrats often unfamiliar with the ground situation and without inputs from commuters who use the services. This is most apparent in the decision to schedule the last train for Karjat from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus at 12:12am and the last service to Kasara at 12:08am, with both stations located about 100km or more from CSMT. These changes came as part of a package from the Central Railway which rationalised trains terminating and starting from Dadar, and moved a few to Parel which is also an interchange point.
The revised timings for more than 80 services on all lines of the Central Railway will throw schedules of many commuters into disarray but none more than the timing of the last trains brought forward by at least half hour to an hour. The last train leaving CSMT on the Central Railway and Churchgate on the Western line has a special place in the lives and working patterns of scores of Mumbaikars who depend on them to get home after odd hours at work. In a city whose image is of one that never sleeps, there is no rationale or logic to advance the timing of the last train, leaving commuters in the lurch. These last trains, leaving terminals well past midnight, ensured that late-night workers were not left without public transport to get home in distant suburbs. Between the Western and Central Railway, together spread over 450 kilometres with more than 2,340 services every day, the timings of the last two trains should have been revised to later, not earlier.
