Mumbai (The Hindu): Sensing chaos on the streets of Mumbai this Sunday as local train services on the Central Line will get suspended from Saturday midnight to Sunday evening, due to the demolition of Hancock Bridge, the BEST and Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) will be pressing extra buses on the roads.

In addition to regular bus trips, BEST will ply four extra buses between CST and Byculla.

“We have finalized the plan in consultation with the Railways. Extra BEST buses will be made available from stations where the long distance trains coming to Mumbai will be terminated,” BEST GM Dr Jagdish Patil said. With trains running between Mumbai-Pune and Mumbai-Nashik cancelled on Sunday, MSRTC will be plying 300 more ST buses. It will deploy 100 buses each for to and fro journeys from Mumbai to Pune and Nashik.

“We will ensure more buses run on Sunday,” said Capt VV Ratnaparkhi, general manager (traffic), MSRTC. As against 250 MSRTC buses that are plied on the Mumbai-Pune route on weekdays, only 150 are used on Sundays. This Sunday, however, the full fleet of 250 will be on the roads.

From Saturday midnight, a massive 18-hour block will begin on the Central Railway for the demolition of the Hancock Road Over Bridge near Sandhurst Road.

The sudden decision has thrown suburban and outstation train schedules into disarray with several trains being cancelled and rescheduled. The Central Railway has suspended suburban train services between CST and Byculla from 12.20 am on Sunday to 6.30 pm. The block in the suburban services, which caters to 42 lakh commuters daily, is likely to affect 50,000 commuters, the Railways said.

Due to the block about 150 suburban services will be cancelled on the main line (CST to Karjat/Kasara). As a result, 476 train services will run as against the usual run of 626 trains.

The 12.10 am CST-Kasara local will be the last local leaving CST on Sunday. The last local for Karjat leaving CST at 12.30 am on Sunday will instead start from Byculla. The last local scheduled to arrive CST at 01.38 am on Sunday will run only up to Byculla. The next morning, trains starting from CST will run from Byculla, Dadar and Kurla.

On the Harbour line, connecting CST to Panvel or Andheri, the Railways will run 577 trains as against the scheduled 446 trains on Sunday. On Trans-Harbour line, connecting Thane to Navi Mumbai, 210 trains will run as against 186 trains scheduled to run on Sunday.

A total of 21 outstation passenger, mail and express trains starting from and arriving at CST stand cancelled. These include the heavily used Deccan Queen, Panchavati Express, Sinhagad Express and Pune-CST Intercity and Indrayani Express.

About 13 other long-distance trains will see ‘short-termination’ at other stations such as Thane, Dadar, Pune, Kalyan and Panvel.Commuter groups unhappy

Commuter groups have described the timing of the bridge demolition as an example of Central Railway’s mismanagement and utter disrespect towards travellers.

“The date for this demolition should have been declared much before, giving time to passengers to plan their trips,” said Subhash Gupta, member of Central Railway’s Zonal Railway Users’ Consultative Committee.

According to Mr Gupta, the absolute lack of communication between several departments of the Railways has resulted in this mess, and travellers will have to bear the brunt. “Shutting operations between Byculla and CST and cancelling trains to Pune and Nashik will lead to chaos. The management failed to understand this,” he said.

Shailendra Kamble, convener of Pravas Adhikar Aandolan Samiti said, “Instead of cancelling all trains, they should have changed their starting point from CST to Dadar, Kurla or Thane. The commuters’ hardships could have been minimized. It seems no serious thinking has gone into the decision,” he said.