Station and the Airport

23 September 2008 - 9:10am — silkboard

Imagine the noise if our new international airport had no escalators to take you up from check-in area to the departure hall? 'Super shoddy', 'oh these cheapos', coin-your-expletives, or 'like our station' right? Switch over to the City station, and remember how you lugged your stuff up the stairs from the platform to the footbridge and back down again.

We can hear you say - there are porters to help. Why does the airport not save some money by arranging for 50-60 porters? Before this gets into socialism vs capitalism like arguments, analyze this.

All Bangalore stations put together may have around 300 porters (plain guess). If you'd put an escalator or elevator on every platform of city station, you are talking a dozen of them. How many people does it take to build those escalators? How many to maintain it? The whole thing put together would employ more than 300 people, and most of them would be better skilled and better paid than the porters. Talk about moving up the chain.

Oh yes, it may cost everyone a little bit of money. Though I have not done the exact numbers, I would guess that Rs 2 from every peson using the station for an year, coupled with advertising rights might suffice. Actually, what got me to write all this is a Southern Railway tender I see in newspapers today. They are selling advertising rights on exteriors of coaches. Reserve price for 4 rakes of GT Express is listed as Rs 67 lakhs for an year.

Where is all this money going? All the talk of profits, why has it not lead to visible improvements in amenities at the stations? Things have improved, yes - cleaner stations, wifi etc, slightly better coaches - but has the improvement been par for the course?

Difference in level and standard of amenities at city's prime station, and its only airport should be a good measure of that thing called "inclusive development. How do we rate Bangalore on this front?

Not that Indian Railways is not trying. They had announced projects to modernize stations on PPP basis. New Delhi stations was to be the first one, but the tendering process there has run into some trouble.

I have no idea about the plans for City Station, have not seen any news item talking about City station modernization stand out recently.

Comments

I don't want to be harassed

vadiraj - 23 Sep 2008 - 2:19pm

After a long trip, the last thing I want is harassment by few people and asking for more money than the service charge. I would rather carry my bags than hand it over to someone to find out later some bags are missing. Believe me self service is the best service. I would like to have elevators in Railway Station similar to Airport though.

job cuts...

narayan82 - 23 Sep 2008 - 9:47pm

I Agree...

If the excuse SWR is giving is Loss of Jobs/Depriving people of thier jobs?.......... puhleeeessseeee! You can employ 300 of them in a much more profitable position at the same station (without much of training). How about some of these.

Give them a power hose and ask them to was the tracks between platforms (start from Platform 1 it will be a 12 hour shift to cover all 12 platforms!)
Ticket Checkers (not collectors)
Security
Customer Service.Journey Care for disabled passengers/elders?
Coach Cleaners?
Enforcers for cleanliness (making sure no one litters/spits)
Garderns (adding some greenery to the station)

I could go on and on.........

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

Praja Visit to City RS !

kbsyed61 - 23 Sep 2008 - 11:07pm

Narayan,

Your post seems to suggest that it is time, Praja members to take a fact finding trip to city railway station to study its whole operations live and study the following:

Platform ticket counters
Entry and exit points
Passenger drop off points
Parking locations and Parking system
Passenger amenities on platforms
Connectivity to platforms

Hopefully after a few hours of thorough study, you should be able come up with simple, viable and easily implementable action items to make the RS more passenger friendly? I am sure the Station Manager or superintendent would be happy to host Praja members.

Syed

we should ...

narayan82 - 23 Sep 2008 - 10:56pm

good idea KB... I can volunteer one weekend to visit any station. Maybe we can split into teams and do a report/fact finding of all the stations (City, YPR and Cantt.) And we should do it twice, once with SWR taking us through and once incognito....

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

Station affects the most than airport

Vasanth - 24 Sep 2008 - 7:10am

Station is the common place and used by one and all compared to the number of people using airport. Airports are used by VIPs and far cleaner and organized compared to Station. Some of the things that needs to be addressed earliest is the ticket counters. More ticket counters are needed compared to the number of trains that are running. If we want to see the crowd, we have to go early at 6 AM or Saturday afternoon at 1:30PM. So many train leaves Bangalore and it is very difficult to get the ticket especially from the back gate. By the time we reach counter, train would have left station. Second thing is the Underpass leading to station from KBS and the railway station compound. The jargon of passing through footover bridge within station, passing through underpass from station to KBS and again footover bridge of the KBS. This needs to be fully made footover bridge starting from station all the way to KBS joining the station footover bridge with KBS footover bridge. Footover bridges will be cleaner compared to subways because of the aeriation.Hawkers cannot stand longer due to wind and sun. Subways offer shelter for the hawkers. People can have more area in subways to litter. One can experience this by walking on subway as well as footover bridge in the railway station and see the difference.

Vasanth - City Station trip?

silkboard - 24 Sep 2008 - 8:30am

Nice idea Syed.

Vasanth, do you want to lead this one? Contact City station master, and request a vist where he will show us around and tell us about the plans for the station. Doing it with him is better. If he says no, then we will go on our own one day and see things for ourselves.

I am game, this should be a nice weekend activity, and a light one too. Can bring kids along, they all love trains!

Correct me if I am wrong!

psaram42 - 24 Sep 2008 - 10:16am

I think you are missing the point. You can cycle instead of walking. Take a Bus at the most. two or four wheelers no no. Learn horse riding for a change. There is a severe resource crunch you may not be aware folks! Replace Human labor with more machines? At least you get some exercise while tugging your luggage along. However you would like to have a tread mill at home with variable angle of climb! What are you talking about?

just used that as an example

silkboard - 24 Sep 2008 - 9:52am

Amenities at the station was the topic, human labor aspect came in as a side-subject. Even there, the point is about creating better skilled jobs. There is no disrespect for work anyone does. Dignity of labor stands, but you need to move people up the chain if you want growth.

A dream

navshot - 24 Sep 2008 - 7:03pm

I always dream (well, wish would be a better word) of handling luggage as we do during air travel. Just imagine if you could check in your heavy baggage at the entrance and walk in freely with handbag. It would be hassle free to board and get off the train without heavy luggage. This may need a dedicated coach for luggage, but it could be theoretically offset by using increased free space in passenger coach to increase passenger capacity. Double Decker sitting compartment for example. I know a whole lot of logistics and infrastructure need to be built around this, but isn't worth it? -- navshot

-- navshot

Psaram & Navshot

narayan82 - 24 Sep 2008 - 7:37pm

Psaram: (this reply is IF I HAVE UNDERSTOOD you correctly, else feel free to delete) I Kindly Disagree w.r.t the station. In general, in India - I can understand manual labor vs automation given our population crisis. You see, Handling luggage isn't always excercise. Its more often than not a burden! Having SWR tell me that I need excercise and I need to use this op to shed a few pounds, while I am struggling to carry my 4 bags onto the stairs isn't something I would like to hear. I like my excercise at 6 am on an empty road! Now, I shouldn't have to pay money to have my own bags carried. Instead a few elevators/escalators and some Trolleys would be welcome! We are still lugging our own baggage but wih ease (and some excercise). You have to consider all sorts of travellers - Elderly, women with children, families....etc) Also, I can't understand why airports allow this luxury and railways do not. Are we saying that if you pay less you have to carry more/suffer more? Is this a distinction in income levels? As in my previous post, the human aspect of it too can be solved. All the jobs put at risk by elevators/escalators...etc can be shifted to a more useful and effective manner. NavShot: I have dreamt the same dream! But my understanding is, for a 2 day journey often u will refer to ur suitcase and hence require it beside you. Also rail journeys allows you to enter excactly 1 min before the train leaves and board with your luggage, this might not be possible with check-in facility. But I have experienced journeys in Germany, where a assistant at the entrance of the coach assist you with you bags, and makes sure they are placed in an area which is non intrusive to other passengers. That system was effective and convenient. Even now, we have a law of 40 kgs per passenger (or something like that) more than which has to be booked in the luggage van. Bottom line being, SWR/Railways is not improving its service standards and is riding a monoply. No matter what service they offer trains will run full! They have to get over this, and act further. I have suggested before. Why not privatise the train? It is still run by IR, but each coach can be leased to a company. For E.g. (Kingfisher can own 5 coaches, jet owns 3, Spicejet owns 2...etc). Each company/operator does up his interiors, offers services and competing fares. This would offer us vareity and comfort!

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

Need a deep study !

kbsyed61 - 24 Sep 2008 - 7:38pm

Navshot, Your suggestion is appealing but can't compare air travel with train travel. In air travel it is point to point and even on multi-stop flights, # of passengers are very few and manageable. Also the whole operations of carrying the luggage from checkin counter to the baggage carousels at the destination point is relatively secured and away from public access and gaze. I am not saying that it is not feasible, but would require a thorough study and hard work to understand the current process in IR. The same efforts that Devesh had put in HAL airport to understand its operations. From a high level, I think it can be made feasible at least for passengers whose destination is same as that of the Train's destination like B'lore to Delhi, H'bad etc. IR can charge few extra bucks for Valet service and should also offer security of the luggage. This is possible, but still require lot of manpower, logistics and some out of box thinking on part of the IR management. To start with, IR can introduce use of luggage carts by passengers/porters to move the luggage. Supplement this with assistance of porters who would help take the luggage carts. But this brings up the issue whether the stations has elevators, escalators or ramps to allow luggage carts to be taken across to the different platforms. Just imagine today how would you take a luggage from entrance of Bangalore RS to Platform 6/7 for trains to Mysore and other destinations. I am sure it would be quite an interesting exercise to understand suggest a workable solution for this.

About Railway Station Woes.

psaram42 - 25 Sep 2008 - 10:12am

Railways are running in profit, in spite of being a public sector undertaking, managed by a person of Lalu fame. He is being invited by IIMs to share his experience of efficiently managing the Railways.

The problem facing the world is the environmental issue of global warming as a result of excessive development and exploitation of resources. Mr. Al Gore VP of USA was awarded Nobel peace prize for his work in the area of global warming. After seeing the two Al Gore CDs I am a bit obsessed with it, like others are obsessed with IT, progress, Luxury etc. These people may not understand the advantages of simple living and high thinking.

I did not mean dignity of labor when I wrote about replacing human labor with machines at all. My point was about global warming as a consequence of adding machines. Resource crunch is a direct result of population explosion and explosion in living standards. Exploitation of resources is limited by the environment tolerance available.

The example of mighty US falling to its knees, Terrorism to stay, Religious turmoil etc could be the warnings of a coming doom. ->)

I am just adding another view point. Please do not take it very seriously.

Raise your hands

silkboard - 25 Sep 2008 - 10:49am

Anyone wants to oraganize a meeting with South Western Railway? Lets start with Station master or whoever of City Railway station. Station facilities is one thing, we have to chase down and track Commuter Railway Service as well.

Just spoke with Murali, he is game, and will be contacting SWR for arranging a meeting to just know our City station (CRS later). If you want to help, please join by contacting him via a private message.

I am in

Vasanth - 25 Sep 2008 - 5:16pm

I am in for meeting with SWR. I do not have any contacts though to organize the meeting. Whenever I send email to station master, Bangalore City, I don't get any response whatsoever. So is the case of any railway officials.

meeting with SWR

ssheragu - 25 Sep 2008 - 6:43pm

ssheragu I want to b ein ths time, if it is on a Saturday or a Sunday Thnaks Srinath Heragu

Psaram - contd...

narayan82 - 25 Sep 2008 - 7:28pm

Psaram, I have watched Al Gore's documentary - The Inconvenient Truth. It is very moving, and I too do take the issue of climate change very seriously. Of course our government is not taking as seriously as I wish they did...I am very happy to see that there are others too as or more concerened than me. Where the station can make a HUGE impact is by using alternative sources of energy. How about making platform lighting solar? How about a recycling plant for the water. How about getting the "Kulhars" (Clay cups) back, making a ban on Plastic? Lalu had some good ideas which I never saw implemented. How about recycling/seggregation of waste in the station? The station waste (wet wate) can produce enough Bio Gas to run a generator for a few hours atleast? At the same time, convenience for the passenger must also be emphasised. Cleanliness, ease of access and avoiding congestion is key to a working station.

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

Station Details !

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 10:17pm

SB, You have rightly pointed out that station amenities in one thing and commuter service is also equally important. That means it requires 2 different efforts. One for station, one for commuter services. For the station, these are the few things that comes to my mind about Station

Railway Station (Current status)

Entry and Exit roads to to station
Parking, Drop off/Pickup areas
Access to take the BMTC services
# of ticket counters for Platform, for regular long distance journey (unreserved)
Entry and Exit points to the Platforms
Enquiry and Help Desks
Connectivity to other platforms
Restrooms
First-Aid Center
Waiting Rooms
General Security on Platforms
Available seating on Platforms
Local/STD call booths, eateries
Postal and Banking Counters

What can be done to make it more passenger friendly (Wish List)

How to make the entry and exit to station premise hassle free? i.e., station tarffic not holding the regular traffic and vice-versa.
How to segregate arrival and departure traffic
One time checkin of luggage (as suggested by Navshot)
(Running a shuttle service from RS to KG Bus Station and other locations in surroundings)
Compulsory security for all passengers
Making entry to all platforms from single area (after security Check)
Getting seats reserved during purchase at daily ticekt counters

I am sure there will be lot more items to add to the list. But we can make begining to see how far we will be able to gather the information and put our ideas for mitigating any bottlenecks.

Railway Commuter Service

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:18pm

Who can deny the utility of railway commuter service if that can be introduce in Bangalore. It will elevate lot of road traffic woes supplemented with last mile connectivity in CBD. You may laugh at my suggestions, but lets not miss any opportunity. In worst case scenario, we may fail. Let's be failure after we have tried. The start would be to meet with local SWR officials and get a feel for their take on this. And also explore with them what are routes/avenues that would be helpful for this effort. That would give an idea about the complexity of the project. Also I remember from daily commute days on B'lore to Mysore lines, there is a local railway committee that regularly meet to take stock of various railway related issues. Usually MLA and MPs are also part of this group/committee. Next stop would be to meet this committee. I am sure the last stop would be to meet the popular central railway minister none other than 'Lalu Prasad'. I am sure there would be support from Business and Industry circles, if need arises.

Follow Chennai's lead on

mcadambi - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:02pm

I recently visited Chennai and made some quick observations. Their suburban rail is utilised very well and has even sections for first class passengers (A/C coaches). My cousin travels daily from Nungambakkam, which is in the central part of the city to his college at Sattankulathur, which is in the neighbouring district of Kanchipuram. By train, the journey takes him about 40 minutes and if he had took peak hour bus, it would have taken 2 hours at best. Like him, there are millions of others who optimally use Chennai suburban rail. One wonders why Bengaluru cannot follow such an example. http://en.wikipedia.org/w...

Any connections in SWR?

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:19pm

MCadambi, Any contacts in SWR or local railway committee?

Suburban rail...

narayan82 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:25pm

Maybe this earlier map that we at Praja had come up with can be carried along to see why it is or is not workable?

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

SWR Information !

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:37pm

Here is some basic contact information for SWR. Their website appears far better than BIA and BMRCL websites. It also has some interesting details of its operation statistics. Still missing some important information. Hope that we can make a begining to look into RCS for Bangalore.

Website:

http://www.southwesternrailway.in/index.html

HeadQuarter - Hubli

General Manager - Shri Praveen Kumar

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Division Railway Manager - Bangalore

Shri Mahesh Mangal, M. Tech, Indian Railway Service

http://www.southwesternrailway.in/profile_drmbng.htm

Vasanth, Contact Public Relation Officer !

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:44pm

Vasanth, I think for Bangalore City Station, we may need to contact the Public relation Officer rather than the Station Master. usually station master at SBC are always busy with handling arrival/departure of so many trains. In early 90s, I used to know of one station master (Samiullah), who had told me that he gets only about 30-40 minutes of time during night between 2:30 am and 4 AM. All other times he don't even get time to say hello to other colleagues.

PRO contact at SRW !

kbsyed61 - 25 Sep 2008 - 11:49pm

Here is the PRO contact info. Not sure if these are current

http://www.southwesternrailway.in/bng_p_relations.htm

Divisional Railway Manager - 080-22871498

Additional Divisional Manager - 080-22205749

Public Relation Officer - 080-22874670

contact established

murali772 - 26 Sep 2008 - 1:25pm

This comment has been moved here.

Muralidhar Rao

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Station and the Airport

Comments

I don't want to be harassed

job cuts...

Praja Visit to City RS !

we should ...

Station affects the most than airport

Vasanth - City Station trip?

Correct me if I am wrong!

just used that as an example

A dream

Psaram & Navshot

Need a deep study !

About Railway Station Woes.

Raise your hands

I am in

meeting with SWR

Psaram - contd...

Station Details !

Railway Commuter Service

Follow Chennai's lead on

Any connections in SWR?

Suburban rail...

SWR Information !

Vasanth, Contact Public Relation Officer !

PRO contact at SRW !

contact established

Praja.in comment guidelines

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