Indian Railways To Build Bridges At 477 Level Crossings For Faster Train Movement

Indian Railways will construct rail over bridge (ROB) and rail under bridge (RUB) at over 400 places across the rail network to address delays due to level crossings (LCs) that impede traffic flow.

Besides, the railways will also remodel over 200 station yards where train detentions are reported regularly. There are around 477 manned level crossings on the railway network which delay trains by more than an hour per day owing to the high volume of vehicles crossing the rail lines.

An analysis of the unscheduled detentions in mid-sections has also found another 250 stations and station-yards where the aggregate train detention is more than four hours a day.

Based on the findings of the analysis carried out by using the satellite-based train location tracking data, the Indian Railways is prioritising the construction of ROBs, RUBs and the remodelling of yards. The Railway Board has reviewed the progress of these construction works.

According to the railways, the prioritisation was done using machine learning data analytics with big data from satellite train tracking devices using ISRO satellites.

All railway zones have completed the field survey of the level crossings and stations, which are bottlenecks.

Around 60-70 per cent of congested level crossings and 90 per cent of station detentions have been identified accurately for better planning, according to the study.

As per the analysis done by the Central Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the stations that witness more detention of trains include Marripalam in Visakhapatnam, Tatanagar, New Alipur in Kolkata, Ghaziabad, Tughlakabad, Tilak Bridge and Shivaji Bridge in Delhi-NCR. In the case of level crossings, two such crossings in Tatanagar top the list.

According to the report, the estimated detention of trains at the identified level crossings and stations and station-yards may result in loss of more than 4 per cent section capacity in some instances.

“This loss in section capacity cannot be overcome by resorting to doubling or automatic signalling. Possible interventions that may improve capacity are — at station/station-yard by easing interlocking or building ROBs and at LCs by construction of ROBs and RUBs,” it said.

The CRIS has installed ISRO satellite-based location-tracking devices on more than 2,700 electric locomotives and the GPS-based tracking devices have been fitted in more than 3,800 diesel locomotives. These devices relay the train position — latitude and longitude — and speed every 30 seconds.