Trains from Pune to Mumbai and vice versa are few and far between, which forces commuters to rely on buses for travel. However, with traffic jams on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway becoming a daily occurrence, the commute takes five to six hours instead of the usual four-hour journey. In order to make the commute hassle-free, netizens are demanding hourly trains between the two prominent cities in western Maharashtra.
A Reddit user wrote, "Why can't we have a Mumbai-Pune hourly train or a frequent local? We have technology that doesn't require additional engines in the ghat section now (e.g. VB trains). The government is spending so much on infrastructure, so why are we not building additional semi-high-speed tracks between Mumbai and Pune and running more frequent trains? I am pretty sure the latent demand on this route is very, very high. Also, the same government in the Centre & state, so coordination is not a challenge as well. I wonder what the government’s plans are on this."
Many agreed with the user and made similar demands.
A user commented, "This regional high-speed connectivity is necessary for sustainable development. It shall maintain an even population distribution and not crowd the cities and exploit the resources such as water, air and land. Sadly, we don't have any good long-term thinking planners to make such things happen. All babus and politicians are narrow-minded to keep cities crowded and earn money via real estate."
"Travelling by train is cheaper than travelling by road. The government knows this. The amount of money the government raises from tolls is bonkers. Then add fuel expenses and the amount they get from taxes. I doubt the government will improve things with respect to routes and frequency," another user stated.
"Vested interests. Think bus operators, taxi operators, travel agents (booking tatkal tickets). All these people lose from seamless, end-to-end, frequent, cheap and clean connectivity. And they are vote banks. The same reason that rickshaws and taxis are now going back to meters. And they ensure their local MLA will not let last-mile connectivity happen. Tatkal reservations were created as a choke point on computer systems so people would pay somebody to book tickets. Same with all the agents at various government organisations," a third user quipped.
