Safety a priority, Rlys to opt for anti-collision system

BOX

On fast track

*100% electrification of broad gauge tracks by 2023

*Aesthetically designed vistadome coaches on tourist routes

* Railways has laid out “National Rail Plan for India – 2030”

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 1

The Railways will go in for an indigenously developed automatic train protection system to prevent collision due to human errors in high-density network routes.

Announcing this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said safety measures undertaken in the past few years could help reduce the number of train accidents in the country.

An allocation of record Rs 1.10 lakh crore was marked for the rail sector, and out of it, Rs 1.07 lakh crore will be kept for capital expenditure. Last year, the allocation was Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

Sitharaman said the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) and Eastern DFC of the Railways would be commissioned by June 2022. The Sonnagar (Bihar)–Gomoh (Jharkhand) section covering 263.7 km would be taken up in PPP mode in 2021-22, while the Gomoh-Dankuni (WB) section over 274.3 km would be set up soon thereafter.

Three new freight corridor projects, namely east coast corridor from Kharagpur to Vijayawada, east-west corridor from Bhusaval to Kharagpur to Dankuni and north-south corridor from Itarsi to Vijayawada, are also in the pipeline, she said.

The dedicated freight corridors will reduce the load on the existing tracks.