There have been no passenger deaths in the past 15 months, the railways said. (File)
Indian railways have posted their best safety performance in the past year with zero passenger deaths due to rail accidents.
While the railways recorded the best safety record ever recorded between April 2019 and March 2020, no rail accident died in a train accident between April 1 and June 8 of this year.
An official statement said that the remarkable feat had been achieved for the first time in 2019-2020 since the introduction of the rail system in India 166 years ago in 1853.
He said the number of passenger deaths in the past 15 months is the result of the railways’ continued efforts to improve safety performance in all respects.
The press release states that safety being the top priority, measures taken to improve safety include the elimination of manned level crossings, the construction of roads on bridges (ROB) and roads under bridges (RUB) , the rehabilitation of bridges, the highest ever renewal of railways and SAIL offers the highest level of rails of the year.
Other measures taken include effective track maintenance, rigorous safety monitoring, better training of railway staff, improvements to the signaling system, the use of modern technology for safety work and the transition to Modern and safer LHB coaches in stages from conventional ICF coaches.
The railways have eliminated a record number of manned level crossings to improve safety.
“A record number of 1,274 manned level crossings were eliminated in 2019-2020 compared to 631 in 2018-2019 (double that of last year). This is the highest elimination ever recorded in level crossings, “said the press release.
He said that 1,309 ROB / RUBs were built in 2019-2020 to improve safety on the rail network and 1,367 bridges were “rehabilitated in 2019-2020 compared to 1,013 (+37 percent from last year ) “.
The railways experienced the greatest renewal of rails for 5181 km of track (TKM) in 2019-2020 against 4265 TKM in 2018-19, which represents 20% of last year.
SAIL recorded the highest supply of rails (13.8 lakh tonnes) during the year. “With the supply of 6.4-tonne long rails, the range of field welding has decreased significantly, improving the reliability of the assets,” said the statement.
He stated that 285 level crossings (LCs) were locked by signals in 2019-2020 and that the cumulative number of LCs locked is 11.639.
To improve safety, mechanical signaling in 84 stations was replaced by electrical / electronic signaling during 2019-2020.
“All of the above could become possible with inputs into the system in the form of Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) introduced in 2017-18 with a corpus of 1 crore of Rs lakh to spend over the next five years, with annual expenses of 20,000 Rs. crore, “the statement said.
“With this fund, it has been possible to undertake very critical security works of an urgent nature and the results are evident,” he added.
