Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw held a high level meeting on Friday (7th March) over the pressing issue of crowd management at stations. During the meeting several key decisions were taken to avoid any untoward incident like Stampede causing loss of lives and property.
Strikingly, last year during the peak festive season, several waiting areas were created outside stations which helped in holding large crowds at Surat Udhna, Patna and New Delhi. These outside stations helped in ensuring that passengers were only allowed to go inside when the train came to the platform.
During the Mahakumbh, similar measures were taken at nine stations of the Prayag area. Now, utilising the experience of these stations, the Railways have decided to create permanent waiting areas outside stations at 60 stations across the country that register heavy footfall on a regular basis.
So far, the pilot projects have started at New Delhi, Anand Vihar, Varanasi, Ayodhya, and Patna stations. With this, the flow of sudden surge in the passenger crowd will be checked and contained within the waiting area. As a decongestion measure, the passengers will only be allowed to move to platforms when the trains arrive at the platform.
Initially, the complete access control will be started at the 60 stations. As per the decision, passengers having confirmed reserve tickets will be given direct access to the platforms whereas those without a ticket or with a waiting list ticket will have to wait in the outside waiting area. To ensure ticketing entry, all unauthorised entry points will be sealed.
Furthermore, two new designs of standard Foot-over-bridge (FOB) have been developed – these will be 12 metre wide (40 feet) and 6 metre wide (20 feet). During the Mahakumbh, wider FOBs along with ramps played an effective role in crowd management. In all these stations, these new standard wide FOBs will be installed.
In the Mahakumbh crowd management, cameras played a critical role. In line with that a large number of cameras will be installed in all stations and adjoining areas for close monitoring.
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At large stations, war rooms will be set up and officers of all departments will work in the war room during crowd situations. Furthermore, latest design digital communication equipment like walkie-talkies, announcement systems, and calling systems will also be installed on all stations that register heavy passenger traffic.
To ensure that only authorised persons can enter the station, the Railways will give a new design ID card to all staff and service persons. Similarly, all staff members will be given new design uniforms for their easier identification during a crisis situation.
At all these major stations, a senior officer will be entrusted as station director with all other departments reporting to the officer. Station directors will be given financial empowerment so that he/she can take on-the-spot decisions for improving the station.
The officer will be empowered to control the sale of tickets as per capacity of the station and the available trains.
