The Ministry of Railways is working on a safety fund in order to improve the safety infrastructure of the country’s rail network, especially in terms of railway tracks and signalling system. Accordingly, it has sent a proposal to the Ministry of Finance to set up a Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh worth Rs 1.19 lakh crore. The basic thrust of this fund will be to go for a modern signalling system and elimination of unmanned level crossings to prevent accidents. This has become necessary also because Indian Railways has decided to increase the average speed of trains.
Indian Railways has been under pressure to overhaul its safety network in the wake of an increasing number of accidents in the past few days. This week, 15 bogies of the Sealdah-Ajmer Express derailed near Rura station in the Kanpur-Tundla section, injuring 50 passengers. In November, 150 people were killed as the Indore-Patna Express got derailed near Kanpur. According to experts, these accidents took place because of a lack of upgradation and proper maintenance of the track and signalling system.
Railway sources said that the Ministry of Finance has suggested the levying of a safety cess on tickets to set up the fund. However, the Rail Ministry is not keen to levy any cess, as it may discourage passengers from travelling by train.
Indian Railways has been working to ensure the safety of running trains. A High Level Safety Review Committee (HLSRC) under the chairmanship of Anil Kakodkar, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, was constituted in 2011 to look into all technical and technology related aspects for the safe running of trains. The committee submitted its report in February 2012. The report has 106 recommendations, to implement which would cost Rs 1 lakh crore.
According to a Ministry official, the HLSRC made 106 recommendations covering various aspects of Indian Railways. “Out of the 106 recommendations, 68 have been fully accepted, of which 27 have been fully implemented. While 19 recommendations have been partially accepted for implementation, 19 were found unacceptable,” he said.
“Moreover, we are working on other measures such as Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) on high density network and elimination of unmanned level crossings in a phased manner,” the official said. TCAS is a radio communication based system, with continuous update of movement authority. This system is aimed at providing the ability of preventing train accidents caused due to signal bypassing or non observance of speed restrictions by train drivers. The signal aspect is also displayed on the DMI (Driver Machine Interface) screen inside the locomotives in the train’s system. After successfully concept trials, the RDSO (Research Design and Standards Organisation) has taken up extended field trials of TCAS on a pilot section—the Lingamapalli-Vikarabad-Wadi-Bidar section of South Central Railway.
The Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) is a proven automatic train protection system to avoid train accidents due to human error of signal bypassing or over-speeding. As a pilot project, TPWS has been provided at the Chennai-Gummidipundi suburban section of Southern Railway, Hazrat Nizamuddin-Agra section of Northern/North Central Railway and Dum Dum-Kavi Subhash section of Kolkata Metro.