City rail station is a stinking mess

City rail station is a stinking mess
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Bangalore has one of India’s biggest, and worst equipped, railway stations.

The city station in Majestic sees over one lakh passengers with 130 trains (arrivals and departures). It has 10 platforms, but most have inadequate roofing. Platforms 6 and 7 have tiled roofs. Some tiles have been removed, and others replaced by asbestos sheets.

Only Platforms 1 and 5 have toilets. This leaves passengers and visitors on most platforms inconvenienced.

Platform 1 looks posh and enjoys an expensive granite flooring. Uneven mortar flooring on other platforms leaves them in a pathetic condition. Funnily enough, these platforms have shiny granite benches on uneven mortar flooring.

Platform 4 is the worst. This is a very narrow platform and most of the space is stacked with parcels and luggage.

Major trains like Lalbagh Express, Island Express, Udyan Express, and KK Express arrive on Platform 4. Passengers hardly gets space to walk.

Platform surroundings are neither clean nor hygienic, and most taps are left running. Some are broken or soiled with pan spit. The subway is also ill maintained.

According to sources, reservation charts are not displayed on all platforms. Platform 1 gets special treatment again. The non-provision of reservation charts leaves wait-listed passengers to depend entirely on the Traveling Ticket Examiner (TTE).

Earlier, major trains used to arrive or depart from Platform 1. After additional platforms were built, major trains are assigned to arrive and depart from other platforms too.

But not all platforms are as good as the first.