The Hindu : To aid mobility at rail stations

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 02, 2004

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To aid mobility at rail stations

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI, APRIL 1. C.S.K. Raj is an architect who was struck by the immensity of the problems that elderly and physically-challenged people face in public facilities, when he alighted and had to cross several platforms at the Vadodara railway station. At 79, he had a bad knee which had been replaced, and needed a wheelchair. On that occasion, it had to be trundled across the rail tracks.

A search for a solution became his mission. And when it emerged, it had two components. One was a wheelchair with a jacking arrangement that would enable a person to reach the level of a train compartment, an arrangement similar to the one with which a car is jacked up to replace a tyre.

The second element was a lift on the platforms that would be just enough to accommodate a wheelchair and an attendant. It would go up to the footbridge level before being wheeled in. Since there are height restrictions necessitated by the presence of electrical lines at railway stations, Mr. Raj suggested that room for the lifts be made available on each platform at the mid-landing area.

Mr. Raj wrote to the Union Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, in November 2003, with schematic drawing and all, pointing out that his design of the Indira Gandhi Planetarium in Uttar Pradesh had similar lifts that are not overhead ones. That building is now in the reckoning for the Agha Khan Award.

Mr. Raj's argument is simple: if such wheelchairs and lift facilities are available in airports, why should railway passengers be denied the facility?

The letter agrees that all this will cost money, but senior citizens and the physically-challenged deserve this help, at any cost, he says.

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