The first impression is the best impression, goes a well-heard saying. This holds good for the people who visit our city too. A majority of people use railways to travel to and from our city.
While the number of people visiting Coimbatore has increased on one hand, on the other hand, the Coimbatore Junction has improved leaps and bounds over the years in terms of servicing its passengers. After the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Campaign, Coimbatore Junction become cleaner, a regular user of the Coimbatore Junction is a testimony to this.
“I am a resident of Coimbatore and a frequent rail passenger. I have been making several trips on trains for the last two decades and I must admit that this station now looks more cleaner, compared to what it was a few years ago".
In the last few months, there were times when I came across a group of young people who were involved in cleaning up the station and talking to the rail users about the importance of keeping the station clean. It is a neat station where crowd is managed efficiently too.” Senthil S, a city-based entrepreneur who was in a hurry to board his train to Hyderabad said.
The Coimbatore Junction has about six platforms in all and a highly placed source from the Railways shares with us that three of the platforms are disabled-friendly. We did a random check on the platforms and one aspect did catch our attention.
While the entire city is struggling to deal with the water crisis, the Coimbatore Junction seldom runs out of water. To confirm this fact, we did a check on this by visiting this railway station at different times during weekdays and on a weekend. We found that the drinking water taps supplied water on a majority of occasions. None of the drinking water taps had tumblers though and this did not surprise us.
The source at the Coimbatore Junction shares with us that all the drinking water taps receive their regular supply of drinking water from a common over-head tank.
“Coimbatore Junction was under the Palakkad Division. From the year 2007 onwards, this station is comes under the Salem Division. In terms of revenue generation, Coimbatore Junction is one of the highest revenue generation railway stations in our state.”
This official shares with us that this railway station is declared ‘A1 station’. A railway station that earns an income of over 60-crores annually is an A1 station.
Upon probing this, the official shares with us “During financial year 2015–16, Coimbatore Junction recorded a review of Rs 982 lakhs from parcel bookings, Rs. 39 crores and 25 lakhs came from bookings of unreserved tickets while Rs. 25 crores and 23 lakhs was earned through booking of reserved tickets in all railway classes".
At any given day about 27,000 railway passengers make use of this station and close to 100 trains use this station of which 68 trains operate daily. The Coimbatore Junction is fitted with 72 Closed Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) that function round-the-clock and this makes this station safe and secure.
The escalators that have been installed at the Coimbatore Junction will be open to public from this March, this official confirmed. The pair of escalators are currently in a testing phase.
The Railways is also in talks with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) to install Water Vending Machines (WVMs) to provide RO Water at affordable prices at Salem division.
The Coimbatore Junction is also open to partnering with corporate houses, NGOs and individuals towards enhancing more value-added services for the public.