To all the aussies/ukiess
I am a Mumbaikar. I travel in trains which carry the same amount of people within Mumbai, that probably would be your railways quota for whole week. And yes I am talking about a single 15 bogie train running form Virar to Churchgate (64km). Numerically we are talking about 7.24 Million people. Normally there are
14 to 16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space. But we never complain. Reason ??
1. Mumbaikars like speed and swiftness.
2. Frequency of these trains
3. Timeliness. You can miss a train by a sec if u do not follow the time table
Though an old image it shows the amt of people travelling per train. This image is of CST.
A moderately crowded train.
In Mumbai people travelling in these trains are not frowned upon. Instead these are the lifelines. Even when packed 140% these trains run at-most a delay of 1sec and frequency between them is now 3mins. These trains do not have specialized lanes, passenger long-dist trains also use the same track.
So Mr. Aussiee/ Ukiee tell me a single railway system in the whole wide world which can handle the super-crush-load of 14 to 16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space, travelling at 50km/hr (sometimes touching 80km/hr at few stretches), maintaining a maximum delay of 1sec and having a frequency of 3 mins ???
Yes our railway service may not win any prizes in Beauty contest, but when u speak business nothing beats Mumbai Suburban Rail service. The same can be extrapolated for Indian Railway.
Regards.
Note: U ppl have way more traffic accidents (your most favored means of transport, correct me if I am wrong) than our train accidents.