Indore: Park Road station a torture hub for the elderly and disabled

The new railway station that has come up at Indore’s Park Road is creating troubles for elderly and disabled passengers.

The new railway station that has come up at Indore’s Park Road is creating troubles for elderly and disabled passengers.

Passengers have to climb up several stairs and cross a bridge to reach the platform and climb down several stairs to exit.

Lone wheelchair is chained to a lamp post. If a passenger finds a railway employee, who operates the wheel chair, he will have to take a long route to cross the tracks to enter the parking area.

“The problem is absence of lift that was supposed to be installed before Simhastha fair (in Ujjain). At present, senior citizens face a lot of problems and an old lady even slipped and suffered a fracture a couple of months ago,” Salim, an auto-rickshaw driver, told HT.

DRM Western Railways (Ratlam) Manoj Sharma said escalators and lifts at the Indore railway station would come up soon.

Meanwhile, experts said the platform’s design was faulty because of its height.

Nagesh Naamjoshi, the member of passenger amenities committee, said amenities such as a lift and other facilities for elderly and disabled people should have started functioning from day one.

He said big railway stations like Indore should also have battery-operated carts to ferry the elderly and disabled people.

An earlier proposal to have such facilities in the station is still on the paper. Besides, people prefer to walk along the railway tracks to the old railway station, about 300 meter away, instead of climbing the bridge and exiting the station.