MUMBAI, Sept. 18 -- The grandfather of public transport-Mumbai's suburban railway-is taking a cue from its much younger counterpart, the metro. Like the latter, Indian Railways is looking into the possibility of isolating corridors on the suburban system. The plan was presented primarily for Central Railway (CR), a complicated rail network, to Union railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw last July. However, sources said that last month both CR and Western Railway (WR) were asked to review the prospects of implementing this out-of-the-box plan with the intention of adding more services and possibly easing operations. At present, CR comprises the main line (CSMT-Khopoli/Karjat/Kasara), the harbour line (CSMT-Panvel/Goregaon), the trans-harbour line running between Thane and Panvel and the fourth corridor of Nerul/Belapur-Koparkhairane. The plan is to divide it into eight suburban corridors, to ensure that when one route is down due to a technical failure, it will not impact the other routes. "These eight corridors can work independently, with trains running and halting at only those stations in the corridor," said a senior rail official. "The advantages are that disturbance in one corridor will not affect the others, passengers will face less confusion due to uniform services, a cyclical time-table can be used similar to the metro rail, and crew can be optimally utilised with uniform working hours. Most importantly, there will be scope to run more services at an interval of 4-6 minutes depending on the time of day." Indian Railways is working on adding 300 new services on both CR and WR to the existing 3,200 plus services, for which there is a need to rationalise train timetables. New initiatives such as the introduction of air-conditioned trains, cab-based signalling to eliminate signal poles and augmentation of the rail network are already in progress. "This system will give us a free hand to decide where we can introduce 100% AC services in the future," said a CR official in the know of the presentation to Vaishnaw. "We can leave out the corridors with stations where there is opposition." The presentation, a copy of which is with HT, states that on CR, the platforms at Parel, Kurla, Dombivli, Ambernath, Titwala and Badlapur could be widened for double discharge on either side. However, some CR officials believe that this system will not work in Mumbai, as the entire system is interconnected and would cause problems. "The existing stations are not equipped to handle so many commuters landing on the platforms at the same time from opposite directions," said another CR official. "Stations, terminuses and roads outside will need to be overhauled or else there could be massive problems of crowd-handling if trains are delayed even for a minute. The system will also put immense pressure on select stations that serve as mid-points of these corridors." WR officials said that since WR's 123-km Churchgate-Dahanu corridor was in a straight line, their issues were different and could be solved by other means. "If we address the issues of completing 5-6 rail lines till Borivali and going further till Virar, and clearing illegal slums along the tracks, then operations can improve substantially," said a WR official. "This pattern of train operations could certainly work, as the entire system would not be impacted in case of failures," said Madhu Kotian, president, Mumbai Rail Pravasi Sangh....