The Western railway is planning to beautify the area around Churchgate and Wankhede stadium in Mumbai at a cost of few hundred crores. All these cosmetic beautification are  okay if the Railway has achieved functional efficiencies at basic levels and is more  commuter friendly in its daily operations.

One area where urgent attention is required is to attend the perennial problem of the existing gap between the foot board of the train and the platform at various stations of the local train services. I am a frequent traveler in the Mumbai locals and find the gap very risky and dangerous to negotiate both while entraining and detraining . Especially when the crowd and the minimum few seconds available are  compelling one to accomplish the task, in a jiffy. Children, women and the elderly are all the time at risk due to this dangerous irritant.Platforms at Khar, Jogeshwari, Malad , etc are few with these death traps.

Railways should make a concerted effort and make  a serous study of this problem and address it fast before it takes few more lives or limbs. It is the basic  non risky operational function that the railways must ensure before it enters the peripheral ares of beautification of the railways surroundings .

In the first place commuters should not be facing this problem endlessly . Engineers of the Railway should have solved this problem on their own without the commuters pointing out this elementary requirement . Its not such a complex engineering problem that our learned engineers are not capable of providing a solution to it .

With the crush hour density travel becoming the order of the day, the problem of  gap should be  solved on a war footing . If need be a special technical task force should be formed and supplied with the resources in terms of money, material and labour to resolve this issue once and for all. No platform at any station should have this gaping hole to cause few more fractures or deaths.The railway should put up a  notice after accomplishing this task.

Yes, we need beautiful looking Railway stations, but not to stack up injured commuters as they walk in and walk out of the trains. Functional efficiencies first , beautification later please .