Railways seeks Rs 20,000 crore to remove all level crossings

NEW DELHI: Railways have demanded Rs 20,000 crore for elimination of all level crossings across the country, which have emerged as "death traps". However, it will be interesting to see if finance ministry accepts the demand.

On Monday, 12 members of a family, including four children were killed in yet another accident at an unmanned level-crossing at Hisar in Haryana once again highlighting the state-run transporter's failure. In a customary move, railways ordered an inquiry.

As of now, in 2014-15, 107 people have been killed at level crossings.

The latest incident comes after two minor children were killed in Hardoi district in UP at a railway crossing in December last year. Just a day before, five kindergarten children were killed when their school van was hit by a train at an unmanned crossing in Mau, also in UP.

While in most of the incidents road users are at fault, but railways too can't avoid the responsibility for failing to eliminate level crossings along railways tracks. At present there are 30,348 such level crossings across the country of which 18,785 are manned and 11,563 unmanned. The unmanned crossings are responsible for the maximum number of train accidents — around 40 per cent.

Also the accidents at level crossings account for 65 per cent of total deaths due to train accidents. Railways have managed to eliminate only 6,502 unmanned crossing in the last six years.

The transporter needs to act with urgency as due to the financial mess it finds itself in, corruption and red-tape it has failed to do away with these accident-prone spots resulting in frequent loss of lives on rail tracks.

The transporter has ignored recommendation of a safety review committee headed by Anil Kakodkar which had suggested for a "dedicated and empowered SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) for each railway zone to achieve the goal within 2017".

The panel has pointed out that around Rs 50,000 crore was needed for the proposal.

Apart from saving lives, it is estimated that monetary saving on account of elimination of all level crossings will be to the tune of about Rs 7,000 crore per annum and thus the entire investment will be recovered in about seven to eight years time as it will improve the line capacity as trains get held up at busy LC gates and would also save operation and maintenance costs incurred at gates.