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• Stung by the criticism over rising number of death on tracks, the Central Railway (CR) is building a smash-free 12-km-long reinforced concrete cement wall along the rail lines to keep trespassers away.A senior CR official said the wall will be built between Sion and Kanjur Marg stations along the slow line track, where most of the encroachments exist. The project is pegged at Rs328 lakh.“We have also identified locations where there are holes and gaps in the existing stone boundary walls between Kurla-Vidyavihar, Vidyavihar-Ghatkopar, Vikhroli and Kanjur Marg stations. The reinforced concrete walls cannot be easily broken. Moreover, we will place barbed wires on top of these walls,” said the official, who did not wish to be identified.
• Last week, there have been two deaths on the tracks on the central line, two of which were followed by agitations and subsequent disruption of services.The official added that the strong boundary wall would serve a dual purpose. It will not just prevent trespassers, but also protect railway property from encroachers.The Central Railway has also taken assistance of cognitive psychology to understand why people would cross tracks and not use the rail over bridges and consequently put up images and formulas that are known to deter such errant behaviour. The CR had hired Final Mile, a behaviour architecture firm, to implement the project at 18 stations.According to this theory, large objects appear to move slower than small objects and so people can not judge their speed.“Commuters fail to realise the speed of trains. To solve this, we painted a sequence of railway sleepers in bright yellow at regular intervals,’’ a CR official said.

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