over half of mumbais suburban railway network users are unhappy with facilities that should have made their journeys more pleasant a railway survey has found the biggest grouse is the time taken to buy a ticket with two out of three commuters complaining about it followed by cleanliness both on the rakes and in the stations and toilets the fewest complaints in a relief to the railway authorities came about punctuality frequency of service and space for passengers on the rakes reflecting the operational strengths of mumbais suburban network the clearest message was the need to improve passenger amenities like dispensing of tickets and cleanliness immediately a survey of 25000 commuters by the mumbai rail vikas corporation mrvc showed that as many as 66 respondents across wr cr and harbour lines were unhappy with the time taken to buy a ticket it was found that it took at least 1030 minutes to buy tickets across 37 stations the worst were dadar and bhayander both wr where it took half an hour it was about 20 minutes across scores of stations in all three corridors see box over the years the railways have introduced coupon validating machines smartcard operated automatic ticket vending machines and appointed agents to sell suburban tickets these do not seem to have made much of an impact on the ground and at least 50 commuters were unhappy with the number of working ticket counters atvms and cvms importantly the survey noted that of the 222 booking windows on wrs 13 stations 17 were closed on crs main line too nearly 37 of the total 187 booking counters were closed it clearly indicates that the queues could have moved faster if all the booking windows remained operational said mrvcs managing director rakesh saksena at many stations coupon and automatic ticket vending machines do not work thanks to tampering and lack of maintenance moreover the interface of atvm is not userfriendly especially for those who are not wellversed with computers said shailesh goyal former member the national rail users consultative committee cleanliness was the top peeve for nearly 63 commuters a breakup along the three lines showed cr commuters both main line and harbour cribbing the most wr rakes are clean as it has a sizeable number of whitecollared commuters compared to cr and harbour nevertheless we have now outsourced cleaning of rakes to a reputed firm and the results have been positive said a cr official third on the discontentment list is inadequate toilet facilities the number of toilets blocks has not increased despite passenger growth stations like elphinstone road parel and currey road now witness more footfalls because of conversion of mill land into corporate offices said rti activist chetan kothari reacting to the fewest complaints about punctuality frequency as well as capacity of the rakes an mrvc official said this is because of the implementation of mumbai urban transport project mutp i during whom 1048 ninecar services were augmented to