Following the New Delhi Railway Station stampede that saw 18 people dead, reports of overcrowding with insufficient crowd control led to an alarming need for more organized crowd control measures in major railway stations.
The Railway Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, announced that the government would build dedicated holding areas at 60 high-footfall stations. These will be either permanent or temporary, situated outside the main platforms for aligning the flow of passengers. Other high-footfall railway stations proposed to this list are New Delhi, Patna, Surat, Bengaluru, and Coimbatore.
Passengers will be allowed to use platforms according to their train departure time, thereby restricting overcrowding at the entrances of stations. Vaishnaw pointed out the successful implementation of similar holding areas at Prayagraj during the on-going Maha Kumbh, which has tackled the problems of passenger accumulation quite well.
He highlighted the aspect that other busy stations would try to adapt this model in the interest of safety and efficiency. Instead of just infrastructural changes, the Railways is additionally in the process of coming out with a detailed crowd management manual. The manual will be an aggregation-based convention manual for existing guidelines plus new SOPs designed to manage passenger states during the festive period or special occasions.
It will ensure that each station’s staff has a proper understanding of directing crowds of a large magnitude, as well as systems to act quickly and coordinate efforts during the peak hour(s).
Ms. Vaishnaw revealed that some awareness campaigns would be organized to educate travelers about the risks arising from obstructing the pathways such as staircases and corridors in stations, thinking that such feelings can’t be created in the minds of the passengers through the imposition of penalties.
Ms. Vaishnaw said that while having a presence on the railway should constitute extended awareness campaigns requiring larger provisions, it, rather than imprisoning offenders under the section of obstruction to traffic on the rail tracks, may create such responsibility among the passengers.
Following these will be The Railways association with RITES would frame solutions for designing permanent holding areas at major stations like NDLS, Anand Vihar, Ghaziabad, Ayodhya, and Varanasi. After approval by the authorities, this model will be extended to all other high-density stations, with that integrated into the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme-a framework for developing more than 1,200 railway stations across India.
Furthermore, stakeholder feedback will be gathered via the continuous improvement aspects within a campaign connecting the hawkers, street vendors, auto and taxi unions, coolies, passengers, and law enforcement within stations, specifically now sustaining a campaign across all stations in Delhi to include feedback from many involved parties.
The recent stampede at New Delhi Railway Station has acted as a catalyst for Indian Railways to reassess its approach in crowd management. By introducing dedicated holding areas; developing complete manuals; awareness campaigns in conjunction with design specialists; engaging stakeholders to understand various station problems, Indian Railways are only pushing themselves to provide a safer and more organized station space for passengers.
