ROURKELA: Amid growing rail traffic congestion on Howrah-Mumbai main line of the South Eastern Railway (SER), almost all the trains continue to run behind schedule, causing significant inconvenience to thousands of passengers on a daily basis.
On an average, about 170 trains including 52 passenger trains pass through the Rourkela junction of Howrah-Mumbai line daily. Reliable sources said almost all the passenger trains run several hours behind the schedule on a daily basis. This, they said, is happening for the past two years largely due to the SER prioritising freight movement.
A reality check of the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) with random examination of prominent mail and super fast trains corroborated the continuing delayed run of trains between September 2 and 9. The 12859 Gitanjali Super Fast Express reaching Rourkela faces an average delay of 3.17 hours. Till Kharagpur junction, the delay increases to 5.30 hours which gets reduced to 4.40 hours at the culminating point of Howrah station.
Similarly, the 12834 Howrah-Ahmedabad Super Fast Express faces average delay of two hours at Rourkela. The 12950 Porbandar Kavi Guru Super Fast Express and 12871 Ispat Express face average delay of about 5.40 hours at Rourkela. The 18030 Shalimar-Lokmanya Tilak Super Fast Express faces average delay of two hours daily while the 12810 Howrah-Mumbai Mail faces average delay of 2.45 hours.
The 22839-22840 Rourkela-Bhubaneswar Intercity Super Fast Express trains were the worst hit with daily late running of eight to nine hours over the past one week. Both trains were cancelled on Wednesday for adjustment of time and to run them on schedule from Thursday.
SER sources said the Intercity Express was facing extraordinary delay over the past week due to development works near Jharsuguda station and recent death of an elephant on the track near Rajgangpur station.
A senior SER officer claimed in recent times, the situation has improved to some extent with operationalisation of the fourth line between Rourkela and Bondamunda which allowed flexibility of sending goods or passenger trains on Hatia, Howrah or Bimlagarh route without longer detention at Rourkela.
Earlier, the Chakradharpur-based divisional spokesperson of SER Aditya Chaudhary had said steps were being taken to address the issue of rail route congestion.