Mumbai strikes gold, bags new services, longer rakes & elevated tracks

MUMBAI: Dinesh Trivedi may have ruffled feathers in Bengal but has given Mumbai its best railway budget in quite some time. Officials rank it better than even those in the late 1990s, when an MP from Mumbai, Ram Naik, was the minister of state for railways. You will have to pay more for your suburban commute and even for setting foot on a platform, but what Mumbai has got this year more than makes up for the first hike in fares since 2003. Railway minister Trivedi has not only set the ball rolling for a substantial increase in elbow room on Mumbai’s lifeline—its suburban trains—but has also pre-empted the pressure that the proposed Navi Mumbai airport would put on transport infrastructure by making the satellite city the focus of much of his plans for the zone. The budget will also give CM Prithviraj Chavan and the Congress — under the weather following the BMC poll debacle and the Kripashankar Singh episode — something to take to the Assembly budget session. It is also an indication of his clout with Delhi and bodes well for the city ahead of Friday’s Budget. The hike in what you have to shell out for your suburban commute is substantial;initial calculations show the hike varies between a little more than 5% (for travel between 75km and 100km) to a substantial 42% (for travel between 10 km and 25 km or, roughly, between Churchgate to Bandra or Andheri). But what you get in terms of more space while travelling makes up for that. Some of it will come later but some of it will be immediate,before this financial year ends. Full Coverage on Budget 2012: Budget 2012, Rail Budget 2012, Pre Budget 2012, Budget News 2012