It will take another three years for trains running between Delhi and eastern India, including Patna, Kolkata and Guwahati, to run on time since the augmentation of tracks will take that much time.
Concerned over the inordinate delay of trains and cancellations of even premier trains due to congestion between the 140-km Mughalsarai-Allahabad section, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday said that the focus is to remove the bottlenecks of the “erratic” stretch and Indian Railways is hopeful that in three years of time infrastructure, including a dedicated freight corridor, will be put in place leading to less complaints of trains running late between Delhi and Mughalsarai.
Prabhu also said that railways is taking several technical enhancement measures so that a better speed is allowed even during foggy conditions which affect trains’ operations in entire northern India. “We initiated the audit of operations on this section to improve our performance. Some improvement is already visible and capacity augmentation in the medium term will further reduce the delays,” Prabhu said in an interaction with the media on Monday.
Chairman, Railway Board, AK Mital, said that once the dedicated freight corridor becomes operational in 2019 the maximum grievances of train delays will be addressed since all the goods train on this route will be running on dedicated corridor. “And by that time, work on track augmentation will also be completed,” Mital told The Pioneer.
On the complaints by passengers, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) last year had sought an explanation from the Railway Minister over the reason for trains running late. It had asked the Ministry to fix the problem on priority.
Railways’ RITES and IIT Delhi and Mumbai have submitted a report for track augmentation between Mughalsarai and Allahabad Junction since the route remains a nightmare for trains. The situation has gone from bad to worse this year in particular after the onset of fog. Trains, including Rajdhanis, are taking nearly 14 hours to cover a distance of 140 km between the two stations. Allahabad junction also caters to trains bound to Mumbai and other central and southern Indian destinations besides New Delhi and beyond.
The report maintained that the maximum number of trains was delayed on the New Delhi- Howrah route, particularly in the Patna-Mughalsarai-Allahabad section due to several asset failures like signalling, engines and track problems.
The initial report submitted to the Railway Minister indicates that the delay of one train on the “erratic” Allahabad-Mughalsarai section is having a cascading effect on punctuality of all the trains on the route.
In his Budget speech last year, Prabhu had pointed that punctuality performance of passenger trains was a matter of concern for several decades. He also admitted that the Ghaziabad to Mughalsarai section (through Allahabad and Kanpur which spreads across three Zonal Railways) badly impacted the overall punctuality of the entire network.
On the issue of derailments in recent past, Prabhu said the Railways has decided to procure the latest technology on a “war footing” to ensure passenger safety and reduce dependence on manual systems. As per the decision, the railways will procure modern equipment for faster detection of fracture on rail tracks. Besides, experts from Japan and Korea would examine the existing safety mechanism and suggest ways to strengthen it.
About the status of special railway safety fund, he said, “There will be no dearth of funds for safety works. We have written to the finance ministry for the special fund and the minister has agreed in principle for it. We were also assured of more safety funds this time.”
Speaking about train fares, Prabhu said, “Earlier there was no competition for railways. But now situation has changed. Budget airlines are directly competing with our premier service.”