Effective crowd management and decongestion of Bidhannagar and Dumdum Stations remain top priority.

Effective crowd management plan is crucial at heavily crowded stations like Bidhannagar and Dumdum for ensuring smooth travel experience, passenger safety and reducing congestion.

Being lifeline of Kolkata’s suburban transportation system, Bidhannagar and Dumdum Stations play pivotal role in dealing passenger rush particularly during peak hours. For example, in normal days Bidhannagar Station has a massive footfall of nearly 1.70 Lakhs daily, out of which, more than 1.00 Lakh footfall is observed during morning and evening peak hours only.

Similarly, Dumdum Junction Station has also very high footfall of about 1.50 Lakhs per day, causing huge overcrowding at these 02 stations, compelling Railway to explore long term solutions.

Under the dynamic leadership of Mr. Rajeev Saxena, Divisional Railway Manager – Sealdah Division has undertaken critical real-time monitoring of crowd density and movement of passengers at 02 aforementioned stations to identify potential hotspots and possible solution thereof as detailed hereunder: –

• Bidhannagar is to be made vendor free station by evicting all vendors & stalls including the authorised one for providing more foot space for commuters to avoid any stampede like situation during peak hours.

• Commissioning of New ticket booking office is being examined at the 02^nd. entry gate of Dumdum Station near RPF barrack to facilitate commuters with better ticketing convenience.

• After the commissioning of Orange and Yellow stretch of Kolkata Metro, Dumdum Cantonment is likely to emerge as new transportation hub for the City of Joy. The State Governments proactive participation in providing better road connectivity for Dumdum Cantonment Station is important for helping people of Salt Lake, Sector-V & Newtown area to avail Dumdum Cantonment station for better seamless connectivity towards Barasat, Bongaon, Hasnabad section. This will, in turn, de-congest heavily crowded Dumdum and Bidhannagar stations.

• It is pertinent to mention here that, daily 222 and 216 pairs of suburban EMU locals are plying at Dumdum and Bidhannagar stations respectively. In order to avoid overcrowding, strategic deployment of staff and Security personnel will be done for crowd management and responding emergency like situations.

• Clear signage and regular announcements through Public Address System will be ensured to inform passengers about train schedules, platform changes etc.

Sealdah Division is the lifeline of Kolkata and adjoining districts and it deals a mammoth pressure of 15 – 18 lakh commuters a day. Regular encroachment and unnecessary trespassing at Dumdum and Bidhannagar station has further aggravated the crowd situation & enhancing the chance of accidents. All passengers are hereby requested to refrain from trespassing for the sake of safety, security and punctuality of train movement.

Team Maverick.