Make Railway Divyang / Senior Citizen Friendly

Today, a wheelchair bound person can not travel by Railways without facing huge challenges. Ramps are absent at most of the places (Including Delhi). Climbing on to Train itself is a huge task. Also, going to another platform at a big station is almost impossible. And even if there are facilities, these are in a remote corner and there are no signs to make wheelchair bound passenger aware of facilities available.

With life expectancy increasing, no. of senior citizens are increasing, and they want to travel but for these difficulties face, they try not to travel by Trains. Same is for other disabled / Divyang People.

I offer foll. points to be sent to Railways to solve these problems.

1. Major Work : Increase Height of Platforms to make it level with Train Bogies. So that a wheel chair bound passenger can easily get in to the compartment. (This is already done on all platforms of Metro Trains (Including Delhi Metro). Also, a senior citizen who can walk but can not climb will find it easy. Make this a time bound task assigned to every Station IN Charge and Concerned Railway Engineering Staff. Create a separate entity to resolve any issues which may cause delay and it may be given necessary powers to expedite the matters.

2. Major Work : Arrange necessary Lifts for use to go to other platforms. And Give responsibility of these working properly to a concerned senior officer at each station. Get report of these working or not every 4 Hours.(This task can easily be automated as well). It is seen that when Escalators/Lifts are installed, Coolies switch it off so that they get more business. Put CCTV Cameras to identify such rogue elements who damage / stop such facilities and punish them. Carry out Accessibility Audit of each and every station for access to all areas using a wheelchair

3. Display signs prominently informing all passengers about facilities available and direction of their location.

4. Make Wheelchairs available at all stations. Passenger can book wheelchair with reasonable fees while booking a ticket and can hire a coolie to take him to the train on wheelchair and pay a fixed reasonable amount to the coolie. It will be responsibility of the coolie to return the wheelchair to its base location and collect his fees. While collecting wheel chair, passenger can be given a coupon with details of his journey (Which can be obtained from his PNR No.) and he will hand it over to coolie who will then collect his fees by giving this coupon at base station. This will generate employment as well.

Same can be done for luggage trollies as well.

5. Railway App should be designed to show all maps of stations / platforms and location of amenities by chosing a station name.