Ticket sales data show Dombivli has emerged as a major destination on Central Railway’s suburban network, eclipsing traditional frontrunner Thane. Ticket sales in April-July 2013 show the average number of passengers buying tickets in Dombivli was 2.18 lakh.
Thane, despite being the most crowded station on the entire Mumbai suburban network, came second with 2.14 lakh passengers. CR’s chief public relations officer Atul Rane said, “The figures include sale of card and season tickets. While Thane has more people in ticket queues, the actual number of tickets booked in Dombivli was the highest in Mumbai.”
Thane, in fact, sells 50,766 tickets per day compared to 30,842 in Dombivli and 30,956 in CST. A CR official explained, “A ticket is issued for single as well as multiple passengers. If one takes into account the total number of passengers booked on the total tickets sold, Dombivli eclipsed Thane by 4,000 passengers.”
Thane held the record for booking the largest number of passengers during the same period last year, with a total of 2.25 lakh passengers. At the time, Dombivli and CST were second and third with 2.06 lakh and 1.98 lakh passengers respectively.
CR is also giving priority to Dombivli in station improvement. For example, after Thane, Dombivli will be the first station to get an escalator, ahead of Dadar or Kurla.
Sudhakar Mahajan of the Dombivli Passengers’ Association said, “Dombivli has grown tremendously over the past several years and this also reflects in ticket sale data.” There are only 12 booking windows in Dombivli, which the association said was grossly inadequate.
Mahajan said, “In the last six months, the situation has improved due to deployment of additional staff. However, booking infrastructure like ATVMs and more operational windows need to be installed so that average time spent in the queue can be brought down to five minutes.”
Indian Railway Turn Around News 
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