A joint meeting of eight passenger associations from Mumbai, Thane, Virar, Dahanu, MMR, and Konkan on Saturday discussed the August 22 protest and called for merging Mumbai’s railway system into a separate, consolidated body called “Transport for Mumbai” to improve suburban services. Commuter organisations in the city have planned a “white wear” protest on August 22 to highlight extreme crowding, congestion, and inconvenience for Mumbai suburban railway passengers.

“It has been decided to place a number of demands to the railway administration, central government and state government, including giving priority to local trains instead of mail and express, slow works of line expansion should be expedited, in case of a breakdown issue an alert to one and all so that commuters know about it and look for alternatives and form a separate joint authority Transport for Mumbai (ToM) for co-ordination of Mumbai suburban services,” Siddhesh Desai, vice-president of the Mumbai Rail Pravasi Sangh, one of the oldest and biggest passenger associations, said. A separate body would focus more on the operations of suburban trains, Desai added.