RAILWAYS
STATION
R A I L WAY S T AT I O N S A R E T H E I M P O R T A N T C O M P O N E N T I N R E G I O N A L
A N D C I T Y ’ S T R A N S P O R T S Y S T E M A S T H E S E A R E T H E G AT E WAY I N T O
THE TOWNS ALONG WITH FOCAL POINT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
A C T I V I T I E S . R A I L WAY S T AT I O N S , A N I M P O R T A N T C O M P O N E N T O F
U R B A N T R A N S P O RT I N F R A S T R U C T U R E , R E M A I N S A L O T T O B E
D E S I R E D I N D E V E L O P I N G C O U N T R I E S R E S U LT I N G I N T H E I R P O O R
P R O D U C T I V I T Y.
Case Study - New Delhi Railway Station
In India, railways play a crucial role in transporting people as well as freight as it caters over 8.107 billion passengers and
nearly 1.108 billion tonnes of freight annually. Indian railways has world's largest railway network comprising 66,687 km
length of route network and 7,216 stations as on March 2016 (Year Book 2015-16, Ministry of Railways). Railway stations in
India are facing many challenges and most of the efforts in Indian railways are targeted towards running more trains to cater
increasing demand, but improving station’s environment to cater that much of demand is completely neglected.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG
Functional Areas of Railway
Stations
The functional areas of railway stations comprise the following areas (Kandee,
2004) as shown in Figure 1:
Core Area: Focus on processing passengers like Ticketing, Information,
Waiting and Restrooms.
Transition Area: Connect transit facilities in the core areas to the
transportation modes like Telephones and Commercial spaces.
Peripheral Area: Support circulation outside the main building like
platforms, tracks and vehicle service spaces. It is further divided into two parts
i.e. Cityside peripheral area and Track-side peripheral area.
Administrative areas: Control both traffic and station management.
Some of salient features of this manual relevant to present study are:
Indian railway stations are divided into four types i.e. Line Stations, Terminal Stations, Transfer
Stations and Inter-modal Stations.
The general sequence of the component spaces in railway station follows the customer’s path: entry,
through the control area, to the platform, and onto the train.
For provision of passenger amenities, Indian railway stations are categorized based on annual
passengers earning of the station having categories A1, A, B, C, D, E and F.
The objective of the Indian Railways is “To maximize passenger convenience with fast and efficient
passenger flow” and Design Approach & Hierarchy should be done from whole to part keeping in
mind three orders of preference i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary order.
Local city developmental bye-laws and master plan shall be followed in designing the capacity of
infrastructure facilities, such as building design. However Indian and international standard codes can
be applied as and when required.
Station facility audit survey: Objective was “to cross-check the availability
of passenger’s amenities in the railway station as per the standards of Indian
Railway Manual”.
Station user rating survey (250 samples): Objective was “to comprehend
the user’s outlook (satisfaction level) on the activities/components to identify
the critical areas of the station for further detailed surveys and analysis”.
Station user characteristics survey (250 samples): Objective was “to
analyze user’s characteristics” i.e. dwell time of each movement and activity;
profession; income level; time spent on the platforms or waiting lounge; and
luggage carried.
Passenger counts at Platforms, FOBs, Staircase and escalator: Objective
was “to estimate current daily footfalls” and “to analyze LOS” with
observation and videography approach. CCTV footages of total 40 hours
duration at 20 locations during peak hours (9am–10am morning peak and
5pm–6pm evening peak) was collected from Northern Railway and
analyzed. In addition observation method has been used for passenger counts
wherever videography data was not available.
