NEW DELHI: The number of passenger trains that depart late from their origin and arrived late at their destination for the last three months have gone up.
While the number of trains that started late from origin was 269 in March, the number went up to 296 in April and further rose to 334 by the end of May 2019. In a similar trend, the number of trains arriving late at their destinations was 389 in March and rose to 628 in April.
The number, however, fell to 517 in May. Officials say that a number of external factors are causing delays in the starting and culmination of trains. “The factors are more external than internal. On our side, there is no reason why the trains should get delayed,” a ministry official said.
Officials say that reasons like terminal capacity, line capacity, inadequate infrastructure, increasing passenger and freight trains and weather conditions affect the punctuality of trains.
Throwing light on the measures taken by the ministry to tackle the problem of punctuality, the official said that GPS enabled devices have been devised by the railways to tackle weather conditions.
“The devices have the ability to alert the drivers about upcoming signals, stations, signboards, etc and help to tackle adverse weather conditions,” he said.
An advanced signalling system is also being used by the Northern Railway to tackle these punctuality issues.
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, after taking over the affairs of the ministry from Suresh Prabhu, had stressed on improving the punctuality of trains. He had introduced measures which were aimed at improving the punctuality of trains.
New innovations to make train travel safer than ever
The Conventional coaches being made at the Integrated Coach Factory (ICF) are being modified keeping in view the safety of passengers and reduction of accidents. Use of Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD) has also been introduced to detect flaws. This helps in the timely removal of defective rails so that news one can replace them so as to avoid any undesirable accident.