Chennai: Traffic and Transportation Forum, Chennai, has submitted a petition to the Commissioner Railway Safety, Chennai, regarding the recent Railway accident where seven lost their lives. The letter read, “We welcome the decision of the Railway Claims Tribunal Chennai Bench in the matter of awarding compensation to the accident victims as they are left with no choice to stand near the entrance as the Railway has not equipped coaches with doors.”
“On 24 July at around 8.15 hours, the fast EMU train from Beach to Tirumalpur was diverted to the express main line. While negotiating at St Thomas Mount Station, this accident has happened. If there was no wall on the platform number three (island platform), this accident would not have happend. As you know while negotiating a curve or change of track, there will be some percentage of tilting towards the opposite side which aggravated the situation of foot-board hanging commuters causing their precious life hitting the fencing concrete pillar.”
“We vehemently insist that the concrete pillar mentioned above should be removed. We want all EMU commuters be brought under the insurance net so that in case of accident like this the victims get more compensation. In order to ease out peak hour traffic, the number of turn-back should be increased and for your information there was four turn-back during meter-guage.”
“Efforts should be taken to run 15 coach and the platforms where necessary should be arranged in a war footing as more than five lakh commuters depend on this section. It is also a fact that 30 per cent of the MTC bus passengers have switched over to EMU. We demand a technical-committe to be constituted to study the poles (current) and Railway signals which comes into contact with commuters travelling near the entrance with bags and necessary re-location of poles / signal posts should be done.”
“The Railways should try for a feasability to make arrangments at the earliest for providing to close the door. Construction of platform on the CMRL side of St Thomas Mount may be done as in case of Mambalam and Tambaram / Park stations,” it said. V Ramarao and V Subramani are the directors of the forum which is based out of Nanganallur, Chennai.