Suresh Prabhu's Mission Zero Accident goes for a toss: Lack of investments to blame?
A senior railway board official said the ministry has so far failed to develop an effective train protection and warning system to avoid collisions and derailments due to disruption on tracks.
In Short
- The Indian Railway's 'Mission Zero Accident' has gone off the tracks
- Suresh Prabhu had launched 'Mission Zero Accident' in the 2016-17
- Number of anti-collision devices were tested, but none have proved to be effective
The Indian Railway's 'Mission Zero Accident' has gone off the tracks completely. While the government claims to have brought down accidents at unmanned railway crossings, derailments have gone up due to varying reasons.
A senior railway board official said the ministry has so far failed to develop an effective train protection and warning system to avoid collisions and derailments due to disruption on tracks.
A number of anti-collision devices were tested, but none have proved to be effective. However, railway engineers are in the process of introducing condition based monitoring system for rolling stock and a 'Track and Ultrasonic Broken Rail Detection System', though a deadline has not been fixed for the same.
"Even if the monitoring device is experimented successfully, it will take many years to equip all locomotives with the device to make rail travel accident free," the official said. Indian railway has over 11,000 diesel and electric locomotives.
Railway minister Suresh Prabhu had launched 'Mission Zero Accident' in the 2016-17 Rail Budget for carrying out a special drive to curb accidents. The Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh, a special safety fund, was created with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of five years for financing critical safety-related works.
"The train-protection warning system (TPWS) and train-collision avoidance system (TCAS) are also being used to prevent accidents. While the TPWS has been installed on a 342-km route, the TCAS is being tried on a 350-km route," the official said.
A large fleet of ICF-made coaches is another major hurdle. The railway ministry admits that 90 per cent of the existing coaches are unsafe and retrofitting them with new couplers would take at least 10 years. But that also comes with a rider. Railways would require huge investment from private players to set up their plants in India to retrofit old coaches. As of now there is no private company in this business.
According to the ministry, it has taken a key step with introduction of sophisticated Linke Hofman Busch (LHB) coaches replacing conventional ones in a phased manner to reduce chances of derailment and bringing down the possibility of grievous injuries or deaths in case of accidents. It has also directed expedition of the manufacture of LHB coaches at its production units, but in order to replace the existing coaches, it will take at least another 20 years.Also Read
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