Are you ready for unwashed rail coaches?

You better be, since BMC refuses to supply water from March

You better be, since BMC refuses to supply water from March

If you find suburban local trains with litter and splattered with pan stains in the months ahead, blame the BMC.
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Swadhin Kshatriya, BMC commissioner, announced on Thursday that the civic body would stop supplying non-potable water to the railways and other public undertakingsu00a0from March.
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This means that the railways will not have water to clean the coaches.

"The city is reeling under a severe water shortage. The railways should look for alternative sources of water," Kshatriya had said.

The announcement has understandably put both the Central and Western railways in a fix.

RAILS RANT: The railways will have to use water tankers if the BMC follows up on its decision to halt supply of non-potable water.

The Central Railway washes approximately 1,000 coaches of suburban and express trains daily, and around 750 coaches of suburban and express trains are washed by the Western Railways on any day.

Non-potable water

The BMC also supplies non-potable water to the railways for cleaning platforms and toilets and for filling up for toilets and washbasins in coaches of express trains.

Most suburban train coaches are cleaned every 10 days. Long-distance train coaches are cleaned when a train completes one trip to its destination.

Given the load of ensuring that around 1,750 coaches of Central and Western railways are cleaned daily, the railway administration has a tough clean-up act on it hands.

"We need water to clean the coaches. If the BMCu00a0 restricts our water supply, it would affect our maintenance schedules. We would have tou00a0 depend on water tankers," said a railway official.

Central Railway Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Srinivas Mudgerikar said, "We will have to talk to the BMC and seek alternatives. We are yet to look at how it affects us.

We will definitely consider all options available.

Western Railway CPRO SS Gupta said, "We will try to maintain optimum cleanliness subject to the availability ofu00a0 water. We are in dialogue with the BMC to find a solution."

1,800
Litres of water used to clean a single coach

18 lakh
Litres of water (90,000 buckets) required to clean 1,000 Central Railways coaches in a day in Mumbai

13.5 lakh
Litres of water used for u00a0cleaning 750 Western u00a0Railway coaches in a day in Mumbai