As adding of more platforms and pit lines are next to impossible at Ernakulam Junction and Town railway stations and the Railways yet to take a call on a coaching terminal at Ponnurunni, demand is rife to realise a coaching terminal sanctioned in 2011 at Kottayam. This will in turn help operate more trains from Kottayam.
Passengers, under the banner of the Kottayam Rail Users’ Forum, have been on the warpath demanding optimal usage of rail infrastructure and a pit line to augment train services from Kottayam.
In a memorandum sent a week ago to Union Railway Minister Aswini Vaishnaw, they cited the potential to operate more train services from Kottayam, especially in the wake of the completion of track doubling through the district. Among the demands is funds on a priority basis in the 2024 Budget to ensure speedy realisation of the Kottayam coaching terminal mentioned in the 2011 Railway Budget.
A coaching terminal will help augment terminal capacity in Kottayam, helping passengers from the central Kerala region – mainly Kottayam, Idukki and parts of Pathanamtitta and Alappuzha. Many trains passing through Kerala are terminating trips in Tamil Nadu for want of terminal space at stations in Kerala. This has resulted in passengers from Kerala finding it tough to get tickets or being unable to board crowded unreserved coaches on trains (mainly to Bengaluru and Mumbai). Such a situation prevails even though Kottayam is ranked 23rd among railway stations under the Southern Railway. It is also a gateway to pilgrim sites and popular tourism destinations, says Gireesh Babu of the forum in the memorandum.
Another demand is a new daily service, preferably a Vande Bharat sleeper train, in the Kottayam-Bengaluru corridor. Students, IT professionals, and passengers are forced to depend on a few hundred private inter-State buses due to inadequate number of trains in the corridor. Mr Vaishnaw had in April assured that a Vande Bharat sleeper train to Bengaluru will be allotted to Kerala by December or in January 2024. They have also been demanding a daily train from Kottayam to Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Chennai.
On its part, the Mumbai-based Western India Passengers’ Association has demanded that the recently-introduced Chennai-Kottayam Vande Bharat be regularised for service throughout the year.
“In addition, the Kanyakumari-CST Mumbai Jayanti Janatha Express must be extended beyond Pune to Mumbai, since the train had been terminating at Mumbai for the past 47 years,” says Thomas Simon, general secretary.
The association too has taken exception to trains passing through Kerala terminating at Tamil Nadu, even as terminal spaces in Kottayam, Kochuveli, Nemom and Ernakulam are underutilised.
The other demands from the passenger organisations include a pair of pre and post-noon MEMU trains to Kozhikode or Palakkad and yet another MEMU train to Thiruvananthapuram, to prevent crowding in general coaches of long-distance trains and commuter trains. They have also been citing how a coaching terminal in Kottayam will help decongest Ernakulam Junction and Town stations, by extending trains that terminate at these stations to Kottayam.
