Question : Maintenance of Railway Tracks

(a) whether despite allocation of huge amount for railway safety in the past, enough is required to be done in the matter;

(b) if so, whether considering the various train accidents reported during the last one year, the Union Government has made a big allocation to the railways for the safety of the railway passengers and if so, the details thereof;

(c) whether the condition, security and monitoring of track is one of the main reasons for the rail accidents;

(d) if so, whether the Union Government is considering that traditional methods of manual railway track inspection and safety has become outdated in present scenario;

(e) if so, whether the Union Government proposes to consider the state-of –the-art and high tech method of monitoring, inspections and maintenance of the rail tracks; and

(f) if so, the details thereof and the time by which the new technology will be made available and implemented in the Indian Railways?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS

(SHRI RAJEN GOHAIN)

(a) to (f): A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.

STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (f) OF UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4361 BY DR. PRITAM GOPINATH MUNDE, SHRI ANANDRAO ADSUL, DR. SHRIKANT EKNATH SHINDE, SHRI VINAYAK BHAURAO RAUT AND SHRI ADHALRAO PATIL SHIVAJIRAO TO BE ANSWERED IN LOK SABHA ON 21.03.2018 REGARDING MAINTENANCE OF RAILWAY TRACKS

(a) and (b): Safety is accorded the highest priority by Indian Railways and all possible steps are undertaken on a continual basis to prevent accidents and to enhance safety. These include timely replacement of over-aged assets, adoption of suitable technologies for upgradation and maintenance of track, rolling stock, signalling and interlocking systems, safety drives, greater emphasis on training of officials and safety inspections at regular intervals to monitor and educate staff for observance of safe practices. The Railways’ Capital Outlay has been fixed at ` 1,20,000 crore in Revised Estimate 2017-18, which is ` 10,065 crore higher than Actual Expenditure 2016-17 of ` 1,09,935 crore. To give fillip to passenger safety, the Government has introduced ‘Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh’ (RRSK) in 2017-18 with a corpus of ` 1 lakh crore to be spent over a period of five years, to clear the backlog of renewal/replacement of safety assents. The Capital Allocation of 2017-18 also includes ` 20,000 crore under ‘Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh’ (RRSK) to be spent on identified works under planheads Track Renewals, Bridge Works, Signalling and Telecommunication Works, Road Safety Works of Level Crossings and Road Over/Under Bridges, Rolling Stock, Traffic Facilities, Electrical Works, Machinery and Plant, Workshops, Passenger Amenities and Training.

(c): Train accidents on Indian Railways occur due to various reasons such as failure of equipment, human errors, sabotage, combination of factors etc. Each and every consequential train accident on Indian Railways is inquired into either by the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS) under the Ministry of Civil Aviation or by the Departmental Inquiry Committee of Railway to determine its reasons. During the current year 2017-18 (from 1st April,2017 to 15th March, 2018), out of total 71 consequential train accidents, 14 accidents were on account of track defects.

(d) to (f): Inspection of Railway Track is done as per Indian Railway Permanent Way (IRPW) Manual, which requires Inspection of track by mechanized means, supplemented by detailed manual inspection to ensure safety. Induction of state of the art technology is a continuous process. Induction of various state of the art technology for monitoring and inspection of rail tracks have been considered, such as Integrated Track recording Cars (TRCs), Ground Penetration
Radar, Axle Box Mounted Accelerometers, Component Monitoring system and Vehicular Ultra Sonic Flaw Detection (USFD). Maintenance of track is done with fleets of state of the art track maintenance machines deployed over different Zonal Railways.
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