Punctuality beats trains: 15-minute delay new normal
Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com28.12.2018
Train on time is increasingly becoming an oxymoron. A minimum delay of 15 minutes and often of a couple hours shows time management has not really been the forte of Southern Railway. In fact, it has fared worse with every passing year.
This lateness sometimes proves to be costly for passengers. For instance, in May, when many medical aspirants from Kerala came to Chennai to write the NEET exam, a girl ended up missing her exam because her overnight train was nearly five hours late.
On October 12, when general manager of Southern Railway R K Kulshrestha chaired a press meet he was asked why the zonal railway had stopped giving details of yearly train punctuality figures. These statistics used to be issued in April during the Railway Week celebrations, on Independence Day and Republic Day. In the past three instances, the statistics were not released. Though Kulshrestha promised to provide the the data, the same has not been done yet. The reason may be that punctuality of trains over Southern Railway, whose administrative control is over TN and Kerala, has gotten worse.
Statistics released by the ministry of railways in the Lok Sabha show that between April and September 2016, around 1,600 trains were delayed. This number increased to 2,233 in the same period in 2017 and jumped up to 3,439 this year. If we look at statistics of the April-June quarter alone, the number of trains delayed from 2016 to 2018 has risen from 686 to 2,579 — almost a four-fold jump.
Railway insiders say the situation was always this bad, but earlier statistics would not depict the true picture as there was widespread fudging of punctuality data. This was indicated by the Railway Board, which warned the zones to stop fudging data as they wanted to set 2018 as the base year to get the proper figures and work on the issues that affected punctuality. Railway officials say the situation will improve as a new system to tackle misreporting of punctuality data has been put in place. “The data logger will digitally record the arrival and departure time of trains at a particular station. It cannot be altered,” said a senior official. The issues that affect punctuality are frequent failures in tracks, poor quality of coaches, frequent run-overs on tracks and natural causes like flood and fog, say railway officials.
Punctuality of trains is a factor that affects every passenger. In many cases, passengers book trains from districts to cities like Chennai and Trichy to catch a flight to a foreign location. For those undertaking journeys on short notice, punctuality of trains is an important factor as they don’t have buffer time. There is also no real-time information given to passengers on train delays. Railway Board has directed that special focus should be given to train delays in Southern Railway as it is a passenger oriented zone (with lesser freight).
ISSUES THAT AFFECT PUNCTUALITY ARE FREQUENT FAILURES TRACKS, POOR QUALITY OF COACHES, RUNOVERS ON TRACKS AND NATURAL CAUSES LIKE FLOOD AND FOG, SAY RAILWAY OFFICIALS
Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com28.12.2018
Train on time is increasingly becoming an oxymoron. A minimum delay of 15 minutes and often of a couple hours shows time management has not really been the forte of Southern Railway. In fact, it has fared worse with every passing year.
This lateness sometimes proves to be costly for passengers. For instance, in May, when many medical aspirants from Kerala came to Chennai to write the NEET exam, a girl ended up missing her exam because her overnight train was nearly five hours late.
On October 12, when general manager of Southern Railway R K Kulshrestha chaired a press meet he was asked why the zonal railway had stopped giving details of yearly train punctuality figures. These statistics used to be issued in April during the Railway Week celebrations, on Independence Day and Republic Day. In the past three instances, the statistics were not released. Though Kulshrestha promised to provide the the data, the same has not been done yet. The reason may be that punctuality of trains over Southern Railway, whose administrative control is over TN and Kerala, has gotten worse.
Statistics released by the ministry of railways in the Lok Sabha show that between April and September 2016, around 1,600 trains were delayed. This number increased to 2,233 in the same period in 2017 and jumped up to 3,439 this year. If we look at statistics of the April-June quarter alone, the number of trains delayed from 2016 to 2018 has risen from 686 to 2,579 — almost a four-fold jump.
Railway insiders say the situation was always this bad, but earlier statistics would not depict the true picture as there was widespread fudging of punctuality data. This was indicated by the Railway Board, which warned the zones to stop fudging data as they wanted to set 2018 as the base year to get the proper figures and work on the issues that affected punctuality. Railway officials say the situation will improve as a new system to tackle misreporting of punctuality data has been put in place. “The data logger will digitally record the arrival and departure time of trains at a particular station. It cannot be altered,” said a senior official. The issues that affect punctuality are frequent failures in tracks, poor quality of coaches, frequent run-overs on tracks and natural causes like flood and fog, say railway officials.
Punctuality of trains is a factor that affects every passenger. In many cases, passengers book trains from districts to cities like Chennai and Trichy to catch a flight to a foreign location. For those undertaking journeys on short notice, punctuality of trains is an important factor as they don’t have buffer time. There is also no real-time information given to passengers on train delays. Railway Board has directed that special focus should be given to train delays in Southern Railway as it is a passenger oriented zone (with lesser freight).
ISSUES THAT AFFECT PUNCTUALITY ARE FREQUENT FAILURES TRACKS, POOR QUALITY OF COACHES, RUNOVERS ON TRACKS AND NATURAL CAUSES LIKE FLOOD AND FOG, SAY RAILWAY OFFICIALS
No comments:
Post a Comment