Indian Railways To Now Remove All Manned Railway Crossings; Busy Golden Quadrilateral To Get Top Priority

Indian Railways has proposed to do away with all manned crossings with help of a Rs 50,000 crore grant from the government spread over four years and the new plan involves no cost-sharing with states, reports Indian Express.

This comes after the railways ministry successfully eliminated all unmanned railways crossings in the country in record time last year.

The plan to remove all manned railway crossings would be funded by the Rs 50,000 crore grant from the Indian government staggered over the next four years. Under this plan 2,568 level crossings would be eliminated on the busiest corridors of Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals.

This would be achieved by constructing road overbridges and underbridges. Railways hopes to get all clearances for the project including land acquisition in the next 100 days.

In India we have 19,000 manned level crossings and many witness heavy traffic flow particularly on the Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals. Manned level crossings provides safety for the road users compared to unmanned ones, however manned crossings also cause hindrance in smooth train operations which is at times susceptible to human error.