Under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme, up to 553 railway stations would get renovations at a cost above Rs 19,000 crore. The goal of the government’s “Viksit Bharat Viksit Railway” program is to improve passenger comfort and convenience by modernising the rail system and railway stations.
“Whatever India does today, it does it at an unprecedented speed and scale,” the prime minister stated in his speech. Safety is just as vital as speed and scale, particularly in light of the numerous rail accidents that occurred last year.
Source: Hindustan Times
When the Coromandel Express and two other trains collided in June in the Balasore region of Odisha, over 290 passengers perished. In October, fourteen people died in a collision between two passenger trains on the Howrah-Chennai line in the Andhra Pradesh district of Vizianagaram.
A freight train that was driverless earlier this week travelled over 70 km on the Jammu Tawi-Pathankot portion of the train track between Kathua (Jammu) and Dasuya (Punjab) before being halted by laying sandbags and wood blocks on the track. An initial investigation has shown mistakes made by both the station master and the driver. Beyond immaculate train stations, passengers certainly desire speedier trains with nicer amenities, but safety shouldn’t be compromised.
Source: Narendra Modi
The Railways need to make course corrections and learn from their different mishaps. The much-discussed Kavach, an automatically developed train protection system developed in the country, needs to be implemented on all lines in a time-bound manner. In December of last year, the government said that the safety performance of the Railways had significantly improved as a result of a number of initiatives implemented over time. Still, there is more work to be done to improve the safety of train travel.
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