Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Perceptible decline in railway accident rate

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI JAN. 14. The track record of Southern Railway on safety has been satisfactory, with the accident rate registering a perceptible decline in the last six years.

The Southern Railway General Manager, V. Anand, talking to presspersons here today, said barring the Kadalundi accident in Kerala last year in which 52 persons were killed, there was not a single casualty in the last five years. The number of accidents came down from 59 in 1998-99 to 20 till December 2002. The appreciable decline was made possible owing to stringent measures adopted by the Southern Railway in consonance with the Ministry's policy.

To ensure safety and minimise human element in railway working, it had been planned to make all stations track-circuited, provide inter-locking facility to more level crossings and improve communication network between the train crew and wayside stations. Now all stations located on important routes had been track-circuited and 95 more stations would be track-circuited in the current year. Similarly 1,476 level crossings had been identified for interlocking, out of which 705 had already been interlocked.

This apart, mechanised maintenance of track, changes in wagon designs and coaches and computerisation of train movement had been adopted. In the current year, 307 km of track had been renewed as against the target of 297 km.

As accidents in level crossings contributed to nearly 20 per cent of the total number, it had been decided to construct more road over bridges and road under bridges and convert unmanned level crossings into manned ones.

Mr. Anand also said the Southern Railway had sent a proposal to include the Taramani-Mamallapuram new line survey in the coming budget. The line would become necessary if the State Government's move to shift the Secretariat to Mamallappuram materialised. Mamallapuram being a tourist town, the new line would also bring more tourist traffic. The administration had also requested the Board to consider gauge conversion of the existing MG line on the Chengalpattu-Villupuram section, a new line linking Chennai Central and Egmore and a new line from Athipet on the Chennai-Gudur section to Tiruvallur for freight traffic.

Meanwhile, the Railway Ministry in its supplementary demand sanctioned a fourth line from Pattabiram to Tiruvallur and two more lines from Tiruvallur to Arakkonam so that there would be four lines on the Chennai-Arakkonam section.

These additional lines would help Southern Railway allot two lines exclusively for suburban traffic, he said.

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