Tag: Indian Railways

Train punctuality hit by safety and maintenance work

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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By the end of this Monday, the Indian Railways reported a network wide punctuality of mail/express trains at just 61%.

This means, almost one in three trains was delayed that day.

If one was to compare this with the statistics for the same day last year, one would get a fair idea of how train punctuality is worsening: last year, same day on-time arrival was 78% for mail/express trains.

So, last year, only one in four trains were delayed, now every third train is running behind schedule.

In terms of absolute numbers, as many as 638 mail/express trains did not arrive on time on May 14 across the country, out of a total operation of 1,646 such trains.

The worst on-time performance was seen in the East Central Railway zone on May 14, where 59% of mail/express trains were delayed. This means not even one in two trains arrived on time.

The North Zone, which accounts for the bulk of train movement on the Indian Railways’ network, had only 50% or half the mail/express trains arriving on time that day. So every second train was delayed.

It is obvious that the Indian Railways is slowing down, with trains increasingly arriving late and railway officials blame a spike in maintenance activities for delays.

The punctuality of trains appears to be worst in years. Enhanced maintenance works are crippling train timings as they either stop train operations at certain points to allow track renewal or require train speeds to be drastically reduced in some sections.

This year, in fact, the railways has been grappling with a peculiar binary: whether to prioritise safety related maintenance works or allow normal operations of trains by reducing block closures to avoid massive delays.

c As delays worsen, there are no easy answers to this question.

Indian Railways is the largest transporter of goods and passengers in India and increasing delays are a matter of grave concern.

Some more data shows how deep the punctuality problem has become. Latest numbers show 145 mail/express trains were delayed on Monday by – hold your breath – anywhere between 12-18 hours.

If we were to condone a half-hour delay, then almost 72% trains were on time – which means at least 18% of trains were still behind schedule.

And data gleaned from replies in Lok Sabha give an idea of how delays are plaguing not just the mail/express passenger trains but also the premium ones like Rajdhanis and Shatabdis.

The reply shows how every third Rajdhani and every third Duronto was delayed between April 1, 2017 and March 10, 2018.

Every sixth Shatabdi and almost every fourth mail/express train was delayed too.

In fact, 451 mail/express trains were delayed every day during this period – as explained earlier, this number has jumped significantly to over 600 a day now.

These significant delays were reported even when trains arriving 15 minutes after their scheduled time were not included in the list.

Senior Railway officials say that “excessive” emphasis on maintenance activities has been a primary cause of such delays and unless a balance is struck between maintenance and punctuality, train delays would become the norm rather than exception.

Sample this: block hours, which refer to the time when no train movement is allowed on a section of the track to complete maintenance, jumped by almost by a fifth last fiscal and the target for maintenance remains at this level even for 2018-19.

Speed restrictions also more than doubled to 4,000 locations in 2017-18 compared to the previous fiscal and are targeted at the same level in 2018-19 too.

Officials say there needs to be a “balance” between safety and punctuality but obviously this is not an easy call.

Since 2014-15, the Indian Railways has grappled with deadly accidents and has been blamed for lax maintenance standards besides other lapses for these mishaps.

Stung by this incessant criticism, the Narendra Modi government shunted out Suresh Prabhu from the Railway Ministry in September last year, bringing in current incumbent Piyush Goyal.

Goyal has been insistent on enhancing all maintenance and safety related works, leading to the present situation where delays are plaguing the network but ministry officials are helpless to tackle these in the face of increased maintenance activities.

As this piece says, 2017-18 has seen the best safety record of the Railways in decades: for the first time in 35 years, the number of accidents is in two digits.

Around this time last year, some of the worst accidents in recent times had dealt the image of the Railways a severe blow.

As of March 30, the number of accidents recorded in 2017-18 stood at 73 — 29% fewer than the 104 in 2016-17.

Just when the new fiscal started, however, there was a deadly accident at an unmanned level crossing in Uttar Pradesh with more than a dozen children dying as their school van crashed into an oncoming train.

This lead Goyal to announce a removal of all such unmanned crossings with the current fiscal when the earlier deadline was by 2020.

This also poses operational challenges, since removal of such crossings requires a section of the railway line to be closed for long stretches of hours each day.

Railway officials have indicated that there needs to be a “substantial” reduction in maintenance targets for train operations to normalise and become more punctual but this may not be what minister Goyal has in mind.

There is some relief in sight though: 400 km each of the Eastern and Western freight corridors should become available before the end of calendar 2018, which will shift some freight traffic away from the existing railways’ network and ease up congestion.

It should also help improve train punctuality. Then, doubling of tracks is also being done at record speed to help ease congestion. But all in all, it is unlikely that India’s trains will run on time just yet.

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Indian Railways to build walls along high-speed corridors, generate revenue through ads

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Indian Railways is considering a proposal to generate revenue through advertisement on walls along the tracks on high-speed corridors, sources have said, amid a push by the national transporter to boost its non-fare earnings.

In talks with contractors, who can deliverer pre-fabricated walls, the railways plans to generate revenue through advertisement to recover the cost of the build. The sources said the idea is to share revenue with contractors, thus enabling the railways to get the walls built at minimum cost.

“With the plan for the Delhi-Mumbai high-speed corridor underway, the need for such walls is imperative for issues of safety. We are mulling the option of generating revenue from them through advertisement as they are high density areas and will get maximum exposure. Pilot projects are already underway and we are hoping to put up walls across the network starting with urban areas,” said one of the sources.

Also read: Bullet train project: Here are key grievances of farmers and land owners

The railways is trying to boost non-fare revenue through right-of-way charges, advertising, land monetisation, catering and parking amid intense competition from airlines and road transport to carry passengers and goods.

Not just revenue, the wall will also help the railways maintain safety on tracks, get rid of encroachers, reduce interference with cattle or other disturbances.

Officials in the ministry also said that various options are being assessed such as a proposal to build sound-proof walls to reduce sound pollution in areas with railway tracks. A pilot project implemented in the South Delhi area around a busy railway track has shown that such walls reduce sound of approaching trains by around 20 decibels.

The walls to be built around 7-8 feet high will have the option of selling space both outside and inside portions of the wall.

The building of these walls is the first step towards converting the Delhi-Mumbai corridor into a high-speed zone, and track changes allowing express trains to run at a maximum speed of 160km per hour.

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Surat railway station to be third in country to have ‘airport like’ facilities, say officials

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Surat railway station will be the third in the country and the second in Gujarat after Gandhinagar to be developed as a world class facility under a Railway Ministry station redevelopment programme, officials said.

The station will be equipped with several “airport-like” amenities under the ministry’s ‘Rs 1 lakh crore station redevelopment’ programme, they said.

SITCO, a joint venture between the IRSDC, the Surat Municipal Corporation and the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation, has invited request for qualification (RFQ) and request for proposal (RFP) for the development of a multi-modal transportation hub at the station, the officials said.

The hub will be built at a cost of around Rs 5,000 crore and is expected to be ready by 2020, they said.

“It is an unique project, in which three levels of government have come together to redevelop the station. The Centre, the state as well as the urban local body will pool land together, which is a first. The construction will start this year,” IRSDC Managing Director S K Lohia said.

The total land area of the station will be 3,19,700 sqm and the built up area 57,739 sqm with the size of the concourse at 9,825 sqm. The area under commercial development would be around 5,07,054 sqm.

The station would be a multi-modal transport hub with a bus terminal having a built-up area of 40,724 sqm, Lohia said.

It will also have five road under-bridges and a parking space for 900 vehicles. It is expected to cater to around 3,49,684 passengers every day, the official said.

The country’s first two world-class stations — Habibganj and Gandhinagar — will be ready by the beginning of next year.

The Habibganj railway station will redeveloped by December 2018, likely six months in advance than its scheduled deadline of June 2019, while the Gandhinagar station, with a five-star hotel atop the tracks, will be completed in January 2019.

The Indian Railway Station Development Corporation (IRSDC) is putting all efforts to provide at least three “airport-like” railway stations during the next one and a half years, the officials said.

The IRSDC is mandated to redevelop about 800 railway stations across the country.

The corporation is a joint venture between IRCON (a Government of India undertaking) and the RLDA a statutory authority under the Ministry of Railways responsible for these projects.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Number of railway accidents has dropped, but safety takes a backseat

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Unmanned level crossings across the Indian Railways’ vast network were seen as the biggest killers till some years back since they accounted for the maximum number of deaths as well as accidents each year.

But concerted efforts by the Indian Railways to convert these crossings into either manned level crossings or to build road over-bridges, have improved matters.

The tragic accident on Thursday morning in Kushinagar is the first on an unmanned level crossing this fiscal; in 2017-18 only 10 of the 73 total consequential accidents were reported at such unmanned level crossings.

This is a far cry from 50 accidents at such crossings in 2014-15 – roughly every third railway accident that year happened at an unmanned level crossing.

According to this agency report, thirteen children were killed and eight others injured when a train rammed into their school van at an unmanned railway crossing in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar area, around 50 km from Gorakhpur.

The children were killed on the spot when the Thawe-Kapatanganj passenger train crashed into the van at the unmanned crossing gate at Behpurva. The train was on way to Gorakhpur from Siwan. The accident allegedly happened due to gross negligence by the driver of the van, despite warnings by a ‘rail mitr’ about the arriving train.

Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani said after the accident that tackling unmanned level crossings is one of the priorities with Indian Railways and all such crossings will be eliminated by March, 2020.

There are 3,479 such crossings now on the broad gauge network and annual targets for eliminating these are being met: 1565 such crossings were eliminated in FY18 while the target in the current fiscal is elimination of another 1,500 unmanned crossings. He said 1,395 road over-bridges and under-bridges were built to replace such crossings last fiscal and 1,600 more will be built this fiscal.

Safety Focus

The Railway Board, the premier decision making body of the railways, comprises a chairman and members for five different functions – traffic, traction, rolling stock, engineering and staff.

In the hierarchy of the Indian Railways, the Board is right after the union Railway Minister and his Ministers of State. Several critical railway functions are headed by members but there is no position for member (Safety).

The government has said in the past that neither is there such a post in the Railway Board nor is there a proposal to create such a post afresh.

In its replies to a parliamentary committee on safety and security in the Indian Railways, the union Railway Ministry had said some months back, “Safety is integral to the construction, certification, operation and maintenance of railway system.”

Each member (of the board) is responsible for the respective part pertaining to the department viz.: infrastructure, rolling stock, signaling and operations. Overall co-ordination is done by nember (traffic), Railway Board. Hence, the question of a separate member for safety is not pertinent.”

But the panel re-emphasised the need for member (safety), urging the Indian Railways to integrate of all aspects of railway safety under a single nodal department for quicker response time as well as avoiding bureaucratic friction.

Can member (traffic) not double up as the point person responsible for safety too? The panel said member (traffic) is fully engrossed with the running of trains through the Indian Railways’ vast on daily basis.

Accident Data

The number of consequential train accidents (including accidents at unmanned level crossings) has decreased continuously for the last three years: from 135 in 2014-15 to 107 in 2015-16, 104 in 2016-17 and 73 in 2017-18.

The number of casualties has also come down, barring one year, from 292 to 53 (for 2017-18, till December 2017).

In this reply in Lok Sabha, MoS Raliways, Rajen Gohain, provided data for train accidents since 2014-15, which showed that the maximum number of deaths in 2014-15 occurred due to unmanned level crossings at 130 or almost 45% of all deaths.

So unmanned crossings accounted for roughly every third accident on the Indian Railway network and 45% of all deaths that year. But in 2016-17, 40 of the 238 total deaths in Railway accidents happened on such crossings. This works out to 16%.

Safety Spend

A fund called ‘Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh’ (RRSK) was created last fiscal with a corpus of Rs one lakh crore over a period of five years for critical safety related works.

Rs 20,000 crore was allocated last fiscal and a similar amount has been earmarked for safety related activities this fiscal as well. This fund will be used to plug the gaps in the unmanned level crossings, besides other safety related works.

But as this reply by MoS Railways, Rajen Goahin, shows, each year since 2014-15 safety related allocations have not been fully utilised. And this one shows how there continues to be critical shortage of safety staff across zonal railways.

Last month, a parliamentary standing committee examining the demand for grants for the Indian Railways for 2018-19, had roundly criticised it for continuing to have a large number of vacancies in safety related jobs.

As April 1, 2017, as many as 128,942 positions out of 764, 882 sanctioned strength in the “safety and maintenance’ category were lying vacant. So nearly every sixth safety related position was unmanned.

The panel had also noted that the Indian Railways was giving compensation to existing employees for working beyond normal duty hours instead of hiring required staff.

Finances

The Indian Railways has seen a surge in passenger numbers as well a record growth in freight last fiscal but may still end up with probably the worst operating ratio since 2001. Operating ratio measures how much the Indian Railways has to spend to earn each rupee.

This piece pegs the operating ratio for FY18 at 98.5%, which means the Indian Railways spent 98.5 paisa to earn each rupee last fiscal.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Over 2.3 crore applicants for 90,000 railway jobs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Over 2.3 crore applicants have applied for less than 90,000 vacancies in the Indian Railways, the country’s biggest public sector employer, reported the Business standard.

The numbers, in other words mean that there is more than 255 candidates for every post that has been notified.

The news emerges according to the report, as the railways is going to conduct a fully online examination that the Ministry of Railways termed as world’s largest computer-based recruitment exam.

So far, over 23.7 million applications have been received to fill just 89,409 posts, the report said.

“Online application system has saved the candidates from worries and uncertainties about postal delays or non-delivery of their applications. They are sure of submission of their applications and get SMS and email alerts at various stages of recruitment. Computer-based examination gives the candidates the flexibility of toggling between the languages of questions and revisiting and revising their answers, if required,” the ministry had said as per the report.

Besides making the examination process simple, the fully online procedure as per report will save around a million trees.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Record passenger earnings put Indian Railways back on track

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Indian Railways (IR), world’s largest transporter, earned its highest ever passenger revenue despite effecting no fare hikes.

It indicates that the IR has finally begun to reverse the trend of declining passenger numbers.

The passenger revenue was up 5.1% to Rs 48,642.68 crore in 2017-18 against Rs 46,280.45 crore in the last fiscal.

IR carried 6.74 crore incremental passengers last fiscal.

In effect, the IR added around 185,000 incremental passengers daily on an average in 2017-18 versus the previous fiscal. It earned almost Rs 6.5 crore more on an average each day – without increasing fares – compared to 2016-17.

The gain in passenger numbers as well as total passenger earnings assumes significance since the trend in  previous years has been an year-on-year decline.

FY18 was a year of consolidation and the IR regained its market share in the passenger segment, said Mohammad Jamshed, member (Traffic), railway board.

“Despite stiff competition from other modes of transportation, we were not only able to register positive growth but also surpass the target set for passengers booked in 2017-18,” he said.

According to Jamshed, the total number of passengers booked was 8,286.95 million, 0.82% higher than 8,219.51 million booked during the previous year.

“We have brought back more than 6.7 crore passengers to the Railways, which indicates that IR is the preferred mode of transport, ” he added.

According to IR, the per passenger kilometre cost is almost double the earning from each ticket.

It means ticket prices cover roughly only half the cost of each passenger km, and freight earnings continue to cross subsidise passengers, who have not seen an across-the-board fare hike in many years.

The average spend by the IR on per passenger km is 80 paise while the realisation through ticket earnings is only 41 paise.

This shows why the incremental earnings from the passenger business last fiscal also assume significance, when the IR anyway lost almost Rs 35,000 crore due to its public service obligations.

A NITI Ayog study showed that the IR has a 20% share of India’s total passenger traffic. It carries around 2.4 crore people daily across its network and lays claim to being almost two-and-a-half times the size of the Chinese rail network.

Targets vs Actuals

There has been a shortfall in the revenue earned from passengers (and freight) vis-à-vis respective targets during the last three years, said Rajen Gohain, MoS Railways.

Drop in originating passengers — both sub-urban and non-suburban — are the main reasons for fall in short of its target.

The MoS further added that even in 2017-18, till February, there was a persistent drop in non-suburban passengers.

In 2017-18, though the passenger earnings were the highest ever, they still fell behind the target the IR had set for itself.

In its revised estimates for the Union Budget, the IR had pegged total passenger earnings at Rs 50,125 crore, making the actual earnings a shortfall of about 2.98%.

Steps Taken to Increase Passenger Traffic

One of the biggest challenges the IR faces continuously is meeting growing demand on a capacity constrained network.

Introduction of new trains such as Tejas, Humsafar Express, Antyodaya Express addressed this problem to an extent. In the current fiscal, more such train will be added.

IR is also sweating the assets to improve utilisation, said Jamshed.

“We identified lie over periods of the coaching rakes at the terminals from the time table and used these lie over periods for introducing new trains and extending new ones…. as a result, we have already introduced 20 new trains and extended 44 trains using the lie over period. We plan to further introduce 40 more new services besides extending 56 more trains,” he said.

The Railways also ran multiple special train trips during festivals and vacations. In 2017-18, it operated 36,799 special train trips, which was 9% higher than 2016-17.

Initiatives for Reserved Segment

The IR has three broad categories of passenger traffic: Suburban, which comprises half of the total traffic; short distance non reserved traffic, which comprises another about 42% and the remaining 6-7% coming from the long distance reserved category.

It is the long distance reserved category, which accounts for maximum passenger revenues for the IR and this is where the focus was firmly fixed last fiscal.

The initiatives to woo long distance reserved passengers included increasing  RAC (reservation against cancellation) births by 50%, offering a host of digital services such as waitlisting  and enhancing the number of digital ticketing payment options.

The e-ticketing systems were upgraded in such a manner that frequency of ticket dispensing increased to 20,000 a minute from 7,000 tickets a minute earlier.

Sindhu Bhattacharya is a journalist based in Delhi.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow