Shame old story: Heavy rains bring Mumbai to a grinding halt, again

Even as the city is used to the usual breakdown of services during exceptionally heavy downpour yesterday Murphyrsquos Law appeared to be playing out real time The first sign of trouble presented itself in the suburb of Khardi between Kalyan and Kasara stations at around 610 am As the morning peak hour was about to start there was a technical failure followed by a potential derailment on the Central Railway Then trouble brewed at the sparsely used Monorail and the evening was capped off with traffic at Western Express Highway stalled for hoursAlso Read Mumbai Monorail services hit due to technical glitchTwo monorails were stranded near Bhakti Park station in Wadala PicShadab KhanDerailment Wheel comes offAt 952 am barely 300 meters away from platform 1A a trolley from a KalyanCST local derailed The wheel of the coach came off but sources said that it was a close callldquoThankfully it did not derail any further else we would have struggled in operating other trains leaving to and from CSTrdquo said a CR official The Accident Relief Train ART reached the site immediately but the authorities diverted the Up and Down slow line services before Thakurli ldquoDue to the two incidents we cancelled 60 train servicesrdquo said chief PRO Narendra Patil Central Railway The derailed coach at Kalyan was rerailed at 1220 pm after which the Up track was given the safe nod at 105 PM and Down track at 212 pmMonorail Tyre burst stalls servicesThough the authorities are claiming that the monorail breakdown incident on Monday morning near the Bhakti Park station was a technical snag sources from MMRDA have told midday that one of the reasons for the breakdown was the tyre burst of a nonoperational monorail being towed back with the aid of another monorail It should be noted that there was a similar tyre burst incident earlier as well raising concern over the quality of monorail tyres A source from MMRDA said ldquoThe nonfunctional train that we were towing and bringing back to our car depot at Wadala developed a technical snag due to a tyre burst near the Bharat Petroleum following which the serviced were affectedrdquo However additional metropolitan commissioner Sanjay Khandare refuted the claim and said ldquoThere was no tyre burst incident A technical snag developed in the train while it was being towed because of which the services were affectedrdquo Furthermore on Monday afternoon MMRDA sent a press statement reiterating its earlier position on the reason for the breakdownRead Story Thane Two coaches of KalyanCST local derail near KalyanWEH Potholes unsettle peak hour trafficWithin two days of heavy rainfall the potholes arterial Western Express Highway are back causing immense inconvenience to motorists and leading to heavy traffic jam during morning and evening peak hours On Monday the first working day of the week the commuters and motorists traveling via WEH were stuck in traffic between Kandivali and Malad due to the slow moving trafficGraphic Ravi JadhavTechnical failure All signals redNear Khardi station which is a good 90 km away from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus CST all signals turned redOfficials from CR said that the signal panel went awry and this resulted in there being no trains between Kasara and Asangaon stations for over an hour ldquoThe problem was rectified by 720 am after which train services resumedrdquo said the CR official However the train services continued to run late by at least 20 minutes for the rest of the day20 minsTrain services continued to run late all day60 Number of trains that were cancelled