New Delhi: The railways has finally woken up to the need for punctuality in the running of trains and has taken a slew of measures, including capacity enhancement, construction of additional loop lines at stations and doubling of tracks, to curb delays.
A senior railway official said that steps are also being taken to remove bottlenecks. This will be done with the help of automatic signalling, construction of low-height subways replacing level crossings, rail under-bridges and over-bridges.
The official said that the railways accorded a very high priority to trains running on time. Capacity constraints and adverse weather conditions were the reasons for the delays, he added.
The punctuality rate of railways in the period of April 1-16 was five per cent lower than that in the corresponding period last year. It had come down from 84 per cent to 79 per cent, according to an analysis by zonal railways. Another reason for the delays is congestion, for while traffic has increased considerably over the years, track lines haven’t. As compared to 1950-51, the running track kilometres had increased only about 1.5 times, whereas the freight and passenger traffic had grown almost 15 times since then.
Meanwhile, finding fault with the upgradation of railway infrastructure, a parliamentary panel has sought more focus on public-private partnership model to gird up the infrastructure. Upgrading infrastructure is key to avoiding mishaps, it felt.
According to the report by the railway convention committee, out of an estimated requirement of Rs 8.56 crore, approximately Rs 1.2 lakh crore is estimated to be mobilised from extra budgetary resources, including partnership under the PPP.
Building rail connectivities through PPP was commenced in 2002 when last mile connectivity to the ports through private participation was undertaken. In order to increase private investment and also to attract greater participation from the private sector in rail connectivity and capacity augmentation projects were issued in 2012.
The committee observed that since the Ministry of Railways has taken a conscious and prudent decision to attract private investment for capacity augmentation, it has to be ensured that the PPP policy is effected in a seamless manner”.
