Can staggered work timings solve Mumbai Railways' Peak Hour Rush?

Recently, Railway Minister, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, professed the idea of staggered work hours for offices and workforce in Mumbai. The idea though novel may not find many takers as many lives depend on the earning member. Sometimes they are entrusted with taking kids to school and then proceeding to work. Other times the water supply timings in their societies are planned in such a fashion that you get your daily quota early or late in the night and thus lifestyle revolves around it. Some financial and banking firms have to operate on specific timings to adhere to other regions in India/World and implementing flexible work timings may not be feasible or would mean increase in number of employed personnel.

The move towards a service oriented industry in Mumbai has already seen a vast population turning into shift duties post 1990s and contrary to the perception, there are a lot of people travelling even in non peak hours nowadays as compared to pre 1990 era. Staggered work timings will work for sometime in railways favour but, eventually pressure will be back on them to introduce watertight schedules and increase in frequency of trains even in non peak hours. Investments in Police force may also be needed(A state subject) to support the security infrastructure in nights for patrolling.

There are other issues which we are attempting to push under the carpet which may not be evident in immediately but will slowly push the barriers of biological clock, digestion cycles and human tendencies to work when sun is glowing. Not all humans can easily adapt to such changes in their lifestyles and in the long term may hamper social life.

I know this article is now sounding biased against staggered timings but let me confess, I work for Hospitality and we are in business 24x7. A decade back, I had worked with a Tech Support Centre handling USA Clients and the only reason I left that high paying job after a year was the issues with not being able to cope up with the demands of a completely disturbed body cycle and social life going in disarray. Since then, I have worked with Hospitality major like Taj and worked in 2 shifts of 7am-4pm and 2-11pm shifts. I used to commute from Dombivli to CST for that, waking up early in morning at 4:30am or reaching home by 1:00am in the night. These shifts weren’t as tough as US timing shifts endured earlier. The good thing was the ease of travelling in less crowded and often empty trains.

When I decided to shift to Hilton, being in a Managerial position, I decided to implement staggered shift for the IT Department. Before my joining, the departmental workforce worked in 2 shifts of 9-6 and 2-11.Those were the days when Andheri-Kurla road was a perennial hell with the entire road dug up for Metro and 9-6 shift meant getting stuck in traffic at both times of the day. There were times when I have stood in crowded BEST buses for more than 90 minutes from Airport to Ghatkopar. I decided to take to walking the 6 km in the evening and used to reach Ghatkopar in flat 55 minutes of brisk walking. This was much better than getting stranded in buses. But, this needed to be resolved and hence I rolled out shifts in my department. We now started working in staggered timings like 7-4,12-9 and 2-11.

This ensured that traffic on roads and crowd in train did not affect me or my colleagues. We spent less time in commuting and it was a pleasurable experience. We started enjoying commuting to work. Icing on the cake has been Mumbai Metro. Since June 2014, commuting times have gone down drastically from 2 hours to less than 1 hr 15 min. The shift timings also meant that we could spend more fruitful timings with family and friends. We could also attend to other works like banking and shopping after or before going to work, thus reducing leaves which would have been necessary had we worked 9-6.

To conclude, I can say that Railways are doing their optimal best to serve us. The onus is now on commuters and employers to think on moving to staggered shifts to help their employees. At the same time we are demanding too much from our Railways, it’s high time other modes of transport like Intracity and intercity commuting facilities like better roads , BRTS, Metros and Monorails take over the onus from Railways. State Govt has to move on infrastructure projects faster to complete them ASAP and relieve the commuters who cannot shift to staggered shifts.(Still a vast majority).

Railways on their part need to move to segregating Mail/ Express corridors and City local train corridor. WR can now only expect other modes of transport to ease load on them. CR still has hopes on segregating lines an introducing more locals. Harbour needs additional lines between Wadala and Panvel as well as increasing rake lengths from 9-12. State on its part needs to complete all Metro, Monorail, and BRTS Phases along with building corridors where poor population is not taxed to shift to far flung suburbs. Their commute if cheap and easy with a higher standard of living can revolutionise Mumbai and Suburbs. In today’s date all places beyond Mumbai are heavily dependent on Trains. There has to be a push to make life easier for those people. MMRDA has to work for Mumbai Metropolitan region and not only serve Mumbai City limits.