Agony of the Suratis is 100% genuine. Surat is one of the top 10 cities in India and growing fastest one amongst the larger cities and still does not have proper air connectivity and railway station/ originating trains as per its status. Present Surat station is indeed too small to handle the traffic and it become difficult to board a train due to excessive rush. Surat bound trains are almost always packed.
Demand of the division status for a railway station (a bizarre demand indeed!), shall not give any significant relief to the much troubled Suratis.
Their...
more... immediate demand for short term solution should be
(1) extension of coaching terminal and introduction of new trains originating from ST there after.
(2) Increasing the platform lengths to 26 coaches and add additional coaches to the trains originating and passing through ST
(3) Augmentation works at Udhna/ new station in ST city, if geographical expansion/ population distribution demands.
Long term demand should be to pursue the fast completion of the development of ST Rly stn to International standards, which is in advanced stage. It may be second in India after Habibganj. I expect it to be one of the great success stories in history of stations of Indian Railways. Then it will be possible to have large number of trains from Surat along with seamless integration with road network for onward journeys. This station must integrate with the Bullet train project also, as Surat is likely to provide maximum passengers to the proposed Bullet Train after Mumbai and Ahmedabad. It is learnt that Bullet train fares shall be such that the end to end fares shall be almost the same as the intermediate station fares i.e. fare shall not be proportional to distance travelled. If this becomes true, then Surat boarding passengers shall be at high disadvantage by paying almost the same fare as ones from Ahmedabad for a travel to Mumbai, where as their distance travelled shall be less than half, and time saved will be 2 hrs instead of 5 hrs gained by Ahmedabad passengers. This step is going to hit Surat city badly as the international diamond merchants visiting Mumbai shall continue to do their business from Mumbai as usual and higher fare may deter them from visiting ST every time whenever they come to Mumbai.