Bhubaneswar: Indian Railways which handles more than seven billion passengers a year needs swift upgradation of its infrastructure and technology to ensure safety of passengers.
Majority of rail accidents take place due to derailment and railway needs better monitoring of tracks using advanced technology. Beyond the human error factor in these accidents, overloading is also a great challenge for railways.
Although the last rail budget had mentioned that all railway zones will have advanced ultrasound flaw detection (UFD) machines by March 2017, the largest transport network in the country needs to implement more measures to reduce overloading of trains.
The recent Indore-Patna Express train accident raises doubts about the method adopted to check tracks for cracks and sabotage.
But Divisional Railway Manager, Kurdha Road, Debraj Panda claimed that East Coast Railway (ECoR) has intensified night-time inspection.
“Considering winter and the recent train accident we have intensified patrolling. We are also using the UFD machine to ensure safety,” Panda said.
Although, the railway reports approximately 50 derailments a year, only high speed trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi have the high safety LHB (Linke Hoffman Busch) coaches while other trains use ICF (Integral Coach Factory) coaches.
LHB can reduce the number of fatalities during accidents. For instance, Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani Express accident which happened in 2002 near Rafiganj, claimed the lives of around 120 passenger.
But, in 2010 when Maoists blew the track in Bihar derailing seven coaches of Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express, there were zero fatalities. Significantly, this high speed train was using LHB coaches.
“Railways will have more LHB coaches in the future and upgradation process has already started. Most of the new coaches are LHB coaches,” added Panda.
Although, top railway officials say that railways would have at least 4000 LHB coaches by 2017, the high financial burden incurred for the expensive coaches raises doubts about its practicability. In fact craze for populist budgets over the last many years is cited as one of the major factors for the precarious safety features in railways.
Jose k Joseph
Post News Network
