AROUND 80 daily services will be added to the suburban railways’ daily time-table on Central and Western Railways together from October, said Mohamed Jamshed, Member (Traffic) of the Railway Board. In the city to review railway projects and performance of the two suburban railway systems, Jamshed said in an interaction with journalists that the new time-table will see WR and CR each add about 40 daily services, helping decongest the local trains.

CR presently offers 1,660 services a day while WR operates 1,290 services daily. “The CR division will see another three-dozen services in the new time-table and WR division will also see an equal number, on a daily basis. Among the 2.4 crore travellers on the Indian Railways, the Mumbai suburban section carries 85 lakh a day, nearly a 50 per cent contribution to passenger traffic on the railways,” Jamshed said.

The Railways will increase passenger capacity, too, by looking at possibilities to increase the number of coaches. “We discussed whether services could be introduced with more number of coaches. Like CR sees a 15-coach train but we explored similar possibilities on WR. We also discussed how headway can be reduced further and decided to increase services in areas with more traffic movement,” he added.

Officials said these services would cater to passenger transportation along the northern suburbs of the city. Stations such as Kalyan and Kasara on CR and Dahanu Road on WR will get more services.

About development plans for the Mumbai suburban railways, Jamshed said: “The suburban network has almost become the largest network in the world to see such high sums of investment in projects. Almost Rs 60,000 crore worth of projects have been given for development work, which is huge,” he added.

Regarding his review of current suburban railway projects, Jamshed said encroachments around railway stations added to the time taken in completion of projects.

“The aim would be to add punctuality of services by escalating work on road overbridges where level crossing gates exist,” he added.