Mumbai and surrounding regions has thrown Pune’s outbound and inbound railway services into disarray. Monday marked a critical flashpoint as key trains, including the popular Deccan Queen, faced multi-hour delays, stranding thousands of passengers across stations and coaches.
For Pune’s fast-growing commuter base and long-distance travellers, the episode revealed deeper cracks in the region’s preparedness for climate-induced transport shocks.The Deccan Queen (train number 12124), which left Pune station punctually at 7:15 a.m., saw its schedule unravel by the time it reached Lonavala, arriving 22 minutes behind schedule. As it entered the severely waterlogged stretches around Kalyan, Kurla, and Masjid Bunder, the train was held up for nearly 75 minutes, eventually reaching Mumbai with a staggering delay of two hours and 34 minutes. What started as a routine journey quickly descended into frustration and helplessness for daily office-goers and vacation-bound families.
The ripple effect of the disruption extended far beyond this single train. Many other services along the Pune-Mumbai corridor reported cascading delays due to track inundation in Mumbai, particularly affecting arrivals from and departures to northern India. Railway officials struggled to manage the summer holiday rush, which has pushed up passenger volumes significantly. While special trains had been pressed into service by the Pune railway division to cope with the seasonal demand, the unrelenting rains rendered these efforts insufficient.
For commuters like Ramesh Kamble, who travels to Mumbai daily for work, the experience is all too familiar. “It’s the same every monsoon. We board trains on time and still end up stranded for hours. Today, I missed an important meeting. How long can this go on without a solution? Drainage and signalling systems must be upgraded urgently,” he said, visibly exasperated.This frustration resonated across social platforms as stranded passengers shared videos and complaints online, bringing attention to the systemic failures plaguing railway infrastructure during seasonal weather events. Harsha Shah, president of the Railway Pravasi Group, also criticised the railway administration for its lack of foresight. “The absence of a contingency strategy in a city like Mumbai—where millions depend on timely trains—borders on negligence. Year after year, the same waterlogging and the same passenger distress,” she remarked.
While railway officials acknowledged the disruption and assured that services were being gradually normalised, the incident highlights a chronic issue: a lack of long-term infrastructure resilience. As India witnesses increasingly intense and erratic monsoons driven by climate change, urban transport corridors like Pune-Mumbai must evolve. Band-aid solutions and ad-hoc contingency plans are no longer viable when the stakes include livelihoods, health, and economic productivity.With the Central Railway network forming the backbone of daily commutes and interstate travel, its ability to function under adverse weather is crucial to the region’s economic health. Modernising rainwater management, installing automated signalling systems, and creating flood-proof transport zones are essential steps that remain overdue.
The episode stands as yet another call to action. For Pune, and indeed for India’s rail-reliant cities, the future of mobility lies in resilience. Until then, passengers will continue to pay the price for a system caught off track by every season.
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