Bisheshwar Mishra / New Delhi
Railway Minister Piyush Goel on Friday that the ISRO-developed satellite-based Real-time Train Information System (RTIS) has helped reduce train accidents drastically and also improved train punctuality in the last two and half years.
Replying to a question of MPs Om Prakash Mathur and Ripin Bohra, in Rajya Sabha railway minister said that the RTIS system was undergoing extensive trials. “As of now we have been able to introduce it in 2,649 locomotives out of the 8,700. We are focusing first on the golden quadrilateral because that has the maximum traffic. Trials have not yet got completed. They are still underway. But the good news is that the last two and a half years have been the safest in the history of Indian Railways. It had least number of accidents during this period.”
As safety and punctuality were the two main focuses of the Railways in the past five and half years, Goel said that lot of infrastructure investment had been made by the department to accomplish these two objectives. In this regard he said the ISRO developed RTIS is playing a key role. Earlier it was the Station Master who reported about the train movement and as to what time a particular train passed a particular station. But now this can be monitored by well developed satellite technology about train movement.
This will improve the safety as this RTIS system will be connected to the Control Centre. “If any train is moving slow or fast we can improve upon its speed.” He said If two trains are moving dangerously close to each other we can accordingly increase or reduce the speed of such trains and prevent any mishap with the help of data analytics available now. Thus he said safety in railways had considerably improved.
The Railway minister also said in reply to another question that Railways would soon replace all the diesel engines by electric engines under the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make the rail transport system completely pollution free. Similarly he said that all meter gauge and narrow gauge track system were almost replaced by the broad gauge tracks. He however added that in some hill and scenic areas due to heritage consideration the narrow and meter gauge systems were still operating.