Rs 9768 crore for track repairs & maintenance: Piyush Goyal

Indian Railways (IR) has spent Rs 9768.25 crore this fical for rair and maintenance of railway tracks.

He said this in a reply to a query in the Parliament. The total expenditure incurred year-wise by IR since FY17 is as follows:

Year Total expenditure on Repairs & Maintenance of Permanent Way & Works ( in Rs crore)
2016-17 12244.36
2017-18 13499.96
2018-19 14558.75
2019-20 (Upto 31st October, 2019) 9768.25

He also informed the house that the total number of accidents on IR decreased from 78 in FY17 to 26 in FY20 (to date). The break-up is as follows:

Zonal Railway 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 (Upto 31st October, 2019)
Central 7 8 4 5
Eastern 5 1 0 2
East Central 13 6 6 3
East Coast 6 4 2 0
North Central 4 3 0 3
North Eastern 1 4 4 0
Northeast Frontier 5 1 4 1
North Western 2 2 4 2
Northern 10 10 10 4
South Central 1 3 1 2
South Eastern 0 2 3 0
South East Central 5 1 0 0
South Western 1 1 1 0
Southern 7 3 4 1
West Central 2 0 1 3
Western 8 4 2 3
Konkan 1 1 0 0
Kolkata Metro 0 0 0 0
TOTAL 78 54 46 29

IR has taken several measures to avoid accidents and improve safety on its tracks. They are:

  1. For the current year i.e. 2019-20, 2643 km track renewal has been carried out up to October, 2019. During 2018-19, 4181 km track renewal had been carried out.
  2. Modern track structure consisting of pre-stressed concrete sleeper (PSC), 60kg, 90 or higher ultimate tensile strength (UTS) rails, fan-shaped layout turnout on PSC sleepers, steel channel sleepers on girder bridges are used for primary track renewals.
  3. Long rail panels of 260M/130M length are being manufactured at the steel plant to minimize number of alumino thermit joints in the track. 
  4. Provision of thick web switches (TWS) is planned for all important routes of IR. To expedite provision of TWS, procurement of thick web switches has been decentralized to zonal railways. 
  5. Cold weather patrolling of railway tracks is being done during the coldest part of the night during winter to detect weld/rail fractures .
  6. Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD) testing of rails to detect flaws and timely removal of defective rails. USFD vehicular testing system has been introduced and implemented successfully on Northern Railway.
  7. GPS trackers are being provided to keymen and patrolmen to monitor their movement and to report any unsafe condition noticed by them instantaneously.
  8. Mechanization of track maintenance is being carried out to reduce human error.
  9. Track management system has been introduced on Indian Railways for development of database and decision support system and to decide/rationalize maintenance requirement and optimize inputs. 
  10. Safety drives and inspections at regular intervals are carried out to monitor and educate staff for observance of safe practices.

Related Posts

Got something to say? Post a comment!