Normal air and rail traffic remained affected even on Monday due to dense fog prevailing all over the State as there is no way out with the authorities to deal with the situation. The meteorological office maintained that the fog situation might continue for the next 2-3 days.
“Until there is clear visibility on the railway track and signals not clearly visible to the loco pilots, trains will get delayed as we cannot take risk with the life of the passengers,” said Senior DCM of Ranchi Rail Division Neeraj Kumar. It is important for the driver that the signal is visible to him to run the train, he added.
“Moreover, the driver must have clear visibility of more than 500-700 meters of the railway tracks so that he could apply brakes in emergency situation,” said the Senior DCM. Visibility on Monday remained 200-250 meters which was also below normal, he added.
The Airport authorities also confirmed that a flight could not be allowed to take off or land until the visibility is above the defined limits.
“When the visibility limits gets down the defined limits, we are bound to get the flight diverted to some other destination,” said Director of Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi Anil Vikram. He however claimed that all facilities available with the other Airports of International Standard were available with them and situation everywhere was the same as there is no any technology so far to deal with such situation.
“Birsa Munda Airport is quite compatible to take care of the normal problems arising out in the day to day landing and takeoff, but fog is a different problem which needs to be dealt with separately,” said the Director.
“A flight of Go-Air was diverted due to poor visibility on Sunday while another flight was cancelled from Delhi itself before taking off whereas other flights were on time,” said the Director. The flight was diverted to Kolkata due to poor visibility of 50 m instead of the normal of 1,200 m at the airport in the morning, he said.
The Railways is taking steps to deal with the situation by keeping its system update so that passengers do not have to face problems.
“Yashwantpur hatia Express was rescheduled for 6:25 am on Monday morning which was scheduled to depart on Sunday. It finally departed at 9:00 am on Monday for which system was updated early in the morning so that the passengers get information though SMS or e-mail on time,” said Kumar. It could have been done during the office hour but keeping the problems faced by the passengers some of our staffs were called early in the morning who updated the system that the train got further delayed for 9 am, he added.
Several trains also got delayed due to dense fog as the Delhi bound Rajdhani Express on Sunday, was rescheduled to depart at 10.10 pm instead of 5.55 pm and the Hatia-Yesvantpur Express has been rescheduled to depart at 6.25am on Monday instead of Sunday.
Meanwhile, long-distance buses are also running behind schedule due to poor visibility on roads. Speed of these buses has also been restricted to avoid any untoward incident.