Sucheta Dalal :Making the Railways friendly for the disabled –Part I
Sucheta Dalal

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Making the Railways friendly for the disabled –Part I  

April 9, 2012

If public transport system is not catering to the needs of disabled, their livelihood is being denied. It is of utmost importance that the Disability Act 1995 is implemented in letter and spirit

Sudhir Badami

As a follow up to “Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995”, Government of India through Central Public Works Department (CPWD) as well as Indian Railways through Research Designs Standards Organisation (RDSO) independently prepared guidelines to make their respective built environment accessible to Persons with Disability (PwD) i.e. make them barrier free. This was done in 1998. The CPWD’s 85 page guidelines are more comprehensive than the RDSO Guidelines of 24 pages. In the US, 257 pages design standards emerged as a follow-up to the American Disability Act 1990, revised as recently as 2010 and in 2007, United Nations brought out its 31 Chapters long guidelines, which at present are undergoing revision.

It needs to be emphasized that these are only guidelines. Ultimately, detail pertaining to specific local conditions will determine how best the built environment is made barrier free.

There is one more document that needs to be followed which actually determines the engineering of Railway operations. This is the Indian Railways Schedule of Dimensions (IR-SOD). The IR-SOD first came about in 1913 and has been undergoing revisions over the years to meet technological changes as well as to manage with transitional requirements. The latest revision was made in 2004 and will be referred to herein as IR-SOD2004. This, however, does not include certain dimensions that need to go along with the “new age” rakes being used on Mumbai suburban section. It is also recognized at the outset that, although most railway station infrastructure, especially related to passenger platform, are for exclusively for the suburban services, some platforms do cater to the non-suburban passenger services as well. Imposition of specifications of infrastructure for non-suburban passenger services onto the exclusively suburban passenger services needs to be relooked by the concerned authorities like RDSO and the Railway Board as these are causing hardship to nearly 75 lakh daily commuters of Mumbai suburban Railway system.

If Indian Railways is to be Barrier Free i.e. Accessible to PwD, the details to be followed should be, to begin with, the Railway Guidelines. However, it should adopt those practices which will provide practical solutions as suggested in the CPWD, ADA or the UN Guidelines or even innovate and get RDSO to confirm its workability. One such innovation in this regard is to relocate the compartment for PwD in the train formation. The other being the manner of raising platform level to minimize mainly the wide vertical and also the horizontal gaps presently seen at most stations.



Let us understand that what is relevant here is safe mobility for all, specifically to PwD. For a visually impaired person, guiding blocks of tactile tiles laid appropriately is very useful. The “raised bar” or “corduroy” type for guiding direction of movement and “raised truncated hemispheres” type which acts as warning of a change, hence acts as stop and proceed sign. These “directional tiles” and the “warning tiles” need to be laid to a plan with considerable thought behind it and not left even to a site engineer or to the tile layer as very often happen. One also should not use one type of tile for the other as has been observed.

 

RDSO specified location of providing “minimum 460 mm of guiding floor material at the edge” on Railway station platforms need to be corrected. While it is acceptable to specifically provide better non-skid tiles at the edge, it is outright dangerous to provide it as guiding floor as the suburban local services as well as non-suburban trains will practically be touching anyone on this edge strip, considering that passengers are not always within the compartments of even the non-suburban train services. With overcrowded coaches and commuters overhanging from doors in the suburban sections, it will definitely be very accident prone.

Even the CPWD specification giving 800 mm edge margin is not good with such overhanging commuters although persons standing just beyond the edge margin may just about be missing meeting with accidents.

Railways have been painting or laying a strip of tiles with contrasting colour to warn commuters of dangers of standing in the edge band of the platform, but this warning strip is not recognizable to the visually impaired commuter.

In addition to providing warning strip with “warning tactile tiles” at say 1000 mm from the edge, the right location of guiding “directional tactile tiles” would be along a path adjoining the staircases, leading visually impaired persons to the “waiting spot for PwD” where the compartment meant for PwD halts. Providing such a guiding row of tiles will also make other commuters get into habit of leaving the path unobstructed as far as possible, even during peak crowd.



The compartment meant for PwD currently have been placed adjoining the First Class compartment where relatively fewer crowd is expected. It is also found that the platform space available at these locations invariably narrow down, as these is where the staircases are located. Peak time crowd is not easily negotiable either. Being right there where the crowd is, normal commuters also throng into these compartments and deny most times the PwD access into these compartments and then their rightful seat.



Therefore, it is suggested that these be relocated to the extreme ends, just behind the Motorman’s cabin and in front of Guard Cabin. By doing so, boarding and alighting crowds from the currently neighbouring coaches will be absent, reducing danger and discomfort to them. By doing this, safe passage gets provided to PwD to reach the spot on the platform where the only set of commuters will be PwD, elderly, pregnant women, family with children, the infirm and those with temporary disability and those with arthritic ailments, eliminating most other crowd.


It is recognized that the passage to the waiting spot for PwD will be long and somewhat difficult to negotiate the peak period crowd, but this can be minimized by properly guiding the PwD right from the Foot Over Bridge (FOB).

The current location also brings in the possibility of the doorway of the compartment for the PwD not always halting in front of where the PwD currently wait for the train. Worse situation arises when the gap between two coaches meant for the buffers and couplings come right in front of this spot.

The suggested location not only addresses this problem but boarding and alighting will be under direct observation, but not responsibility, of the motorman or the guard, thereby unauthorized commuters entering these compartments would be under psychological control. Also, the guard and motorman will be able to get the train moving only when the PwD have fully and safely alighted or boarded the coach.



If medical first aid is provided to a victim of an accident within the ‘golden hour’, there is very good chance of saving victim’s life. A scheme has been proposed, if implemented, this medical first aid can be reached to the victim of an accident on the Mumbai Suburban Railway System within three minutes. Nearly 4000 fatalities occur on the suburban railway system annually.

For this scheme, a paramedic and a helper and their kit comprising of stretcher, a ladder and paramedic box need to be housed on every train. They can be accommodated in this compartment meant for PwD. The paramedic and the helper would ordinarily help the persons with disability and the elders to board and alight from the train. This help is needed mainly because the level of the coach floor many times is as high as 585 mm (~23”) from the platform level; most times it is 300 mm to 400 mm (12” to 16”) although there are many cases where the level difference is as low as 100 mm (4”). Until the accidents reduce and level differences are minimized or eliminated, the need for having the paramedic and the helper will remain. Locating the compartment at the extremity of the 12 coach trains would prove to be very useful, although there would be stray platforms where platforms become quite narrow towards the ends. But then, with only PwD, the number of commuters there would also be very much less than what is seen now.


In the second and concluding part, we will see the issue of large level differences between the coach floor levels and Platform levels and how it can be tackled.

(Sudhir Badami is a civil engineer and transportation analyst. He is on Government of Maharashtra’s Steering Committee on BRTS for Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority’s Technical Advisory Committee on BRTS for Mumbai. He is also member of Research & MIS Committee of Unified Mumbai Metropolitan Transport Authority. He was member of Bombay High Court appointed erstwhile Road Monitoring Committee (2006-07). He is member of the Committee Constituted by the Bombay High Court for making the Railways, especially the Suburban Railways System Friendly towards Persons with Disability. While he has been an active campaigner against noise for more than a decade, he is a strong believer in functioning democracy. Mr Badami can be contacted at
[email protected])

 


-- Sucheta Dalal