Compare Dum Dum airport’s rail link to Dum Dum Junction station with Heathrow Express line’s non-stop service between London’s Heathrow airport and Paddington station. Okay okay, that’s too much to digest, I agree.
Compare then Dum Dum’s rail link with that between Chennai’s airport’s suburban rail-station at Tirusulam and Egmore. What do we see?
We see a classic case of everything that can go wrong. If there’s a subject in management studies about how to plan and execute wasting of public resources, then Dum Dum’s rail link will surely be a prime example.
Heathrow Express is the quickest rail connection to Europe’s busiest airport that operates nearly 19 hours a day at 15 minutes’ interval. There’re other rail services to Heathrow airport like Heathrow Connect and London Underground’s Piccadilly Line.
A Heathrow Express passenger coach – smooooth!
[Picture source, ©2006 SPG Media Limited, a subsidiary of SPG Media Group PLC]
Similarly, the desi variety between Tirusulam and Egmore in Chennai is also very efficient. Frequent flyers who use rail service to travel into the city or to airport will tell you how convenient it is for them.
So when Dum Dum rail link came up, there was lot of joy that at last travelers can use the Metro service from Dum Dum Junction for smooth journey to far corners of the city. Unfortunately, that is not meant to be.
According to this report in The Telegraph, this is a train service nobody takes. Why? There are a variety of reasons, but what transpires is that the railway authorities themselves do not want it to succeed. Strange indeed!
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