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RLY Minister Directs Officials To Eliminate All Unmanned Rly Crossings By The End Of Current FY

UNION Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal has directed his officials to adhere to the deadline for eliminating   all Unmanned Level Crossing across the country by the current Financial Year ending on March 31. In his first meeting after taking charge as Railway Minister on Safety Issues on 7 September 2017, Goyal had directed that all UMLCs should be eliminated in the next one year. Significant progress has been achieved in this regard with only 58 UMLCs remaining on the A, B and C routes which account for more than 80% of the Indian Railways traffic. He chaired a detailed meeting with Chairman Railway Board and Members, Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety, GMs of 5 Railway zones and other senior officials in New Delhi recently. During the meeting, he reviewed the plan to completely eliminate Unmanned Level Crossings (UMLCs) from Indian Railways. The meeting started with a 2 minute silence in the memory of the victims of Kushinagar accident. Indian Railways has taken many steps towards reducing accidents at UMLCs with 79% reduction in UMLC accidents in the last 4 years -47 accidents in 2013-14 reduced to 10 in 2017-18. The average rate of elimination of UMLCs has also increased by nearly two thirds over the last four years. Now only 3,479 UMLCs remain on the Broad Gauge network, Railways said in a statement. A multipronged strategy is now planned to eliminate the remaining UMLCs which will include manning of UMLCs, construction of Railway under Bridges (RUBs), Railway Over Bridges, diversion, etc. This will be done through simultaneous execution of work on track sections. A detailed review was done with the GMs of five critical zones such as NR, WR, NER, NWR and ECR with significant number of UMLCs.Progress of elimination of UMLCs will also be shared transparently online through a website to increase accountability and public monitoring. Target for eliminating UMLCs on 11 zones will be September 2018. For the remaining 5 zones targets will be set shortly. The concerned officials have agreed with Goyal   at the meet that Safety of the travelling public should continue to be priority for the Indian Railways.Meanhile, for the convenience of   commuters and encourage the use of Marathi language coinciding with    Maharashtra Diwas on May 1, all the tickets in the State now have the names of the arrival and departure stations in Marathi for local and long distance journeys. SRO has demonstrated a satellite based solution for unmanned level crossings (UMLCs) using navigation and communication technologies to avoid accidents. By automatic triggering, the system provides alerts by blowing hooter in the locomotive as well as audio-visual warning at the level crossing about the approaching train. The concept has been successfully demonstrated and the field trials with railways are in progress. Indian Railways is expected to implement operational system after the completion of field trials. This information was provided by the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region, PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha .(image courtesy to PIB)

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