The Hindu Business Line : `Funds not a constraint for rail safety'

FUNDS are not to be a constraint for railway safety and the private sector should come forward and work with the Railways to make it a safer mode of transport, the Railway Board Chairman, Mr R.K. Singh, said on Wednesday.

"We have prepared a Corporate Safety Plan 2003-13 that charts out the targets for the next 10 years. A white paper on railway safety had been presented earlier. The Railways has accepted and implemented most of the recommendations of different railway safety committees. It is now time for the industry to join hands with us and help in reducing accidents," Mr Singh said at a seminar on railway safety organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here.

"The average accident rate in the Railways at present stood at 0.44 per million km compared with 0.3-1 per million km in different railway systems. Our target is to bring down the accident rate to 0.17 (per million km) by 2013," Mr Singh said.

While accidents cannot be completely ruled out given the mammoth freight and passenger operations of the Railways, efforts were being made to reduce human casualties due to train accidents, he said.

"Despite all the media hype surrounding train accidents, the average number of deaths in train accidents in the last 10 years stands at 400 per year. Out of these, 200 are due to level-crossing mishaps, over which the Railways have very little control. In contrast, 80,000 people die in road accidents each year," Mr Singh said, stressing that the Railways were still the safest mode of travel.

The Chairman said that the Railways was open to ideas from all quarters and had been assured sufficient funds by the Government. "Funds are not a problem now. We have the safety fund, coupled with the Special Railway Safety Fund of Rs 17,000 crore. We hope to use this money to replace ageing assets like tracks, bridges and rolling stock and adopt the latest technology to enhance our safety," he said.

Mr Singh also said that the Railways were also in the process of speeding up. While the wagons were being designed to run at 100 km per hour and reduce the speed differential between passenger and goods trains, the Agra-Delhi section was being geared up for passenger trains at 150 km per hour, he said.