Lying Machines: 50% of Mumbai locals do not reach destination on estimated time of arrival

Scores of Mumbaikars have a common railway complaint – the estimated arrival time of the local trains displayed at railway stations often doesn't match with the real time of the trains' arrival.

This also leads to confusion, as commuters sometimes end up boarding the wrong trains. The estimated time of arrival (ETA) has nothing to do with punctuality; these ETA indicators' sole purpose is to let commuters know exactly when the next train is due.

For instance, if you are waiting at Borivali station's platform number three, the ETA will tell you the next train to Virar will arrive in the next three minutes. The problem across Mumbai's suburban stations is, either the train doesn't arrive as per the ETA, or arrives before time.

The Free Press Journal reporters visited around a dozen stations on the Western line, and the Central Main and Harbour lines during the peak and non-peak hours, surveyed

the timing of around 250 local trains, and found that a whooping 50% of trains did not arrive at the stations as per the ETA.

The Test Drive

The major stations we covered were Dadar, Kurla, Thane, Kalyan, Matunga Road, Andheri, Chunabhatti and Vashi and monitored the trains on both fast and slow lines. On the Central Railway, we monitored 150 locals and found 74 trains notin sync with the ETA. On the Western line, out of 100 trains we monitored, 51 trains' arrival time differed with that displayed by the ETA indicators.

Kurla Platform No. 1

ETA: The ETA showed 6 pm and the Thane slow local was expected to arrive in 13 minutes.

Actual time: The train arrived at 5.58 pm and within a minute the ETA monitor jumped from 13 minutes to one minute.

Matunga Road

ETA: A 3.33 pm Churchgate-bound train was scheduled to arrive at 3.31 pm as per the ETA which showed three minutes.

Actual Time: The train arrived a minute earlier.

(Kamal Mishra, Shashank Rao, Salman Ansari and Bhushan Koyande worked on this story)