Provision/augmentation of amenities at stations, including those for Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) and elderly passengers is a continuous process. In order to provide better accessibility to Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) and elderly passengers, short term facilities as detailed below have been planned at all the stations:

• Standard ramp for barrier free entry.
• Earmarking at least two parking lots.
• Non-slippery walk-way from parking lot to building.
• Signages of appropriate visibility.
• At least one toilet (on the ground floor).
• At least one drinking water tap suitable for use by Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan).
• ‘May I help you’ Booth.

In addition, long term facilities as detailed below have been planned at ‘A-1’, ‘A’ & ‘B’ category stations:

• Provision of facility for inter-platform transfer.
• Engraving on edges of platform.

Details of railway stations provided with facilities for Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) are as under:

Railways has decided to provide escalators at all the A1, A & C category stations (footfall 25000 or above). Additionally railways has also planned to provide elevators at 500 more stations. About 3800 disabled friendly Integral Coach Factory (ICF) design coaches are available in the fleet of Indian Railways (IR). These coaches have a suitably designed compartment & toilet adapted to the needs of the disabled/Divyangs. More disabled friendly coaches shall be added to the fleet of IR in the coming years. It is endeavoured to have at least one such ICR design coach in each Mail/Express train running with ICF coaches. Further, the fully air conditioned (WRRMDAC) Garib Rath trains have been provided with an Air conditioned disabled friendly compartment in the power cars.

For the assistance of visually impaired travellers, Integrated Braille signages, i.e. signages superimposed with Braille scripts are being provided in the newly manufactured coaches of Indian Railways (IR). In addition, retro-fitment of the same in existing coaches has also been taken up in a phased manner. Railways has provided 467 escalators at 171 railway stations and 318 elevators at 134 railway stations for senior citizens/disabled/ Divyangs.

This information was made available in reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

Smt.Jaya Varma Sinha has taken over as the new Principal Chief Operations Manager of South Eastern Railway, this morning (7.3.2018).  Prior to this, she was the Principal Chief Commercial Manager of South Eastern Railway. She is the first woman to occupy the position of Principal Chief Operations Manager of South Eastern Railway, the Railway loading 13.5% of Indian Railways total freight traffic.

An Alumnus of Allahabad University, Smt. Jaya Varma Sinha joined Indian Railway Traffic Service in 1988 and worked in Northern Railway, S.E.Railway and Eastern Railway.  She also worked as Railway Adviser in the High Commission of India, Dhaka, Bangladesh for four years.  The Maitree Express from Kolkata to Dhaka was inaugurated during her tenure in Bangladesh.  She also worked as the Divisional Railway Manager, Eastern Railway, Sealdah Division and Sr. Deputy General Manager & Chief Vigilance Officer, South Eastern Railway.

As many as 40 participants of Indian Origin from Nine Countries called upon the Union Minister of Railways & Coal, Piyush Goyal in New Delhi today. The Know India Programmes (KIP) is an important initiative of the Government of India with an aim to engage and make the students and young professionals of Indian Diaspora, in the age group of 18 to 30years, feel a sense of connect with their motherland, to be motivated and inspired by transformational changes taking place in India and to give them an exposure to various aspects of contemporary India’s forms of art, heritage and culture.

The KIP – a 25-day orientation programme is organized by the Ministry of External Affairs in partnership with one or two States for 10 days orientation programme. The participants are selected on the basis of nominations received and recommendations of Heads of Indian Missions/Posts.  The participants are provided all the hospitality in India.

As part of the 46^th KIP, the participants visited Madhya Pradesh as the Partner State. The participants also visited Parliament House, President’s House in addition to an orientation programme at the Foreign Service Institute.

Piyush Goyal congratulated Ministry of External Affairs for conceptualizing this “Know India Programme” (KIP). Goyal said that KIP helps as a great learning tool for them for knowing their original motherland and sharing experiences for life.

The participants acknowledged that KIP has given them a useful opportunity to know the emerging opportunities in India and helping them understand the Indian traditions, heritage and their family history. The participants particularly mentioned that they had an enjoyable train ride from Delhi to Gwalior.

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said today that the metro rail network in the county was expected to cross 700 km in the next few years.

Addressing an event here, the housing and urban affairs minister said from just 8 km in 2002, as many as 425 km of metro lines are operational as of now in 10 different cities across the country.

He also called for the need to devise technologies that would hep in constructing and operating metro systems in sustainable manner in the country.

“With many cities planning for metro rail and in next few years, the network length of the Metro in India is expected to cross 700 km,” said an official release, quoting the minister.

In addition to this, regional rail transit systems are also being planned to unclog the cities, the minister said.

He said Delhi Metro, with an operational network of 231 km, was carrying three million people every day and expressed confidence that within a year the network length in the National Capital Region will cross the 350 KM.

The Mysuru-Thalassery railway line project stands to be dropped in view of the ongoing agitation in Kodagu and other Cauvery districts in the state and its impact on the environment, if implemented. Union Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal is likely to make an announcement in this regard in the Parliament on Wednesday. According to Railway sources, the Minister has already written to the Kerala chief minister on the non-feasibility of the project.For the last few months, environmentalists, wildlife groups and activists from Kodagu and Bengaluru, and citizens have been up in arms against the development of the railway line and had launched several agitations.

The project would have sounded the death knell for Kodagu district, the birthplace of the Cauvery river, aggravated drinking water situation in several cities and towns and further fragmented the fragile wildlife habitat which is home to several species of animals, including tigers and elephants.On Monday, a delegation comprising office-bearers of Kodagu Ekikarna Ranga and trustees of Wildlife First – M K Chinnappa, Praveen Bhargav, former National Wildlife Board member and H N A Prasad — submitted a memorandum to the Railway Minister opposing the line through Kodagu district and appealed to him to drop the project.

They explained and submitted appropriate ecological justifications as to why the project should be scrapped. They said the project, if implemented, would have an enormous impact on the ecology, hydrology and the flora and fauna of the region and severely fragment the most important wildlife habitat in the country.The existing rail and road lines were sufficient to fulfil the needs of the people of the region, they had told the Minister. The delegation said Goyal categorically promised to them that the Railways would not implement the project.

“The Minister gave a categorical assurance and he was pretty clear about the ecological damage the rail project would have caused (if implemented). Further, he was concerned about both wildlife and water conservation and so forth. That is the assurance we got … he was very categorical and therefore, the issue rests at that point,” former National Wildlife Board member Praveen Bhargav told The New Indian Express.

Prasad, another member of the delegation, said they also met the Railway Board Chairman and apprised him of the issue. “A project, that has been in the offing since 1962, has not taken off for these very reasons as it would have been an ecological disaster. We requested them to introduce one more train between Bengaluru and Mangaluru as the existing rail link was enough. The Minister understood our concerns and said the project was neither possible nor feasible.”

The Integral Coach Factory (ICF) of the Indian Railways has made a ‘Make In India’ manufacturing record by building over 2,239 coaches in the current fiscal year, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said in a recent post on Facebook.

According to the Minister, the factory is now looking at manufacturing a total of 2,500 coaches by the end of the current fiscal year and surpassing the previous best of 2,234 coaches achieved in the fiscal year 2016-17.

According to Goyal, the ICF has nearly tripled the production of Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches. These coaches are comparatively safer and capable of withstanding accidents with minimum damage. While 400 LHB coaches were manufactured in 2016-17, over 1,100 of these coaches were built in 2017-18.

As the production of LHB coaches is being maximised, the Railways would stop inducting the relatively unsafe ICF coaches by the middle of 2018. ICF coaches currently form two-thirds of its 60,000-strong fleet.

Railways Coach factory in Rae Bareli has proposed manufacturing 5,000 LHB coaches every year, up from 1,000 coaches. With 20,000 LBH coaches currently in use, it would take the Railways around 5 years to replace all ICF coaches.

A study by Railway Board has found with focus on safety and infrastructure upgradation, some zonal railways have “prescribed over-inspections” on prolonged basis which is taking a toll on implementation work and stretching working hours of employees by several hours.

The study by Railway Board’s Transformation Cell found instances of prescribing over-inspections on a prolonged basis and it was revealed that officials require excessive duty hours per month to undertake laid down codal inspections, which is quite an onerous task to be performed alongside other functions.

“Instances of prescribing over-inspections on a prolonged basis have come to notice if Board, such over inspections on a prolonged basis are bound to result into lack of attention in other crucial areas related to implementation and monitoring,” said a communication by Railway Board to all zonal railways.

The Railway Board said that quality inspection is the sine qua non for Railway working.

“It is incumbent on Railway officials to perform this function in most effective and efficient manner, at a frequency laid down in codes manuals/instructions. Along with the inspections, quality follow up, implementation with due resource allocations to ensure compliance on a sustained basis is equally important. Therefore a reasonable balance of time between inspections, consultations, planning, designing, tendering and monitoring is essential,” it said.

The directions further said that without any dilution of the existing instructions, it should be ensured that inspection schedules already codified or as conveyed through manuals/special instructions are not increased on a regular basis.

“Also, it would be in fitness that officials other than general management/safety, concentrate on their respective domain rather than on other departments, in order to focus on their respective domain expertise and also not to unduly generate voluminous inspection notes for the field officials of other departments,”

To put the station redevelopment programme on track, Indian Railways is likely to infuse equity into its arm Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation (IRSDC), which is the designated nodal executing agency, so that the latter can raise funds from the market. While the transporter was already deliberating this idea, government think-tank NITI Aayog has also expressed the same view as it believes IRSDC may lack financial muscle.

A Cabinet note for inter-ministerial consultation is in circulation seeking to make IRSDC the nodal agency for the revamped station redevelopment programme. The programme proposes that IRSDC can start preliminary work of select stations to showcase the viability and then the stations can be auctioned to private builders. In case there are no takers, IRSDC will complete the project by sourcing funds.

However, NITI Aayog, through informal comments, has conveyed that IRSDC may not be able redevelop stations and at the same time cross-subsidise stations with weak commercial prospects.

A total of 600 stations are to be redeveloped wherein the developers will get railway land in return for commercial use for a proposed lease period of 99 years against a pre-determined rental. But all stations do not promise sizeable returns from commercial development and developers may not be willing to pay high lease rentals. The railways expects the returns it will get from stations with higher potential will help in cross-subsidising the others.

According to a railway ministry official, the railways will provide IRSDC an annual operation lease money which comes to around Rs 200 crore (for 25-30 stations) and it expects return on investment in the form of dividend at 15%. IRSDC, in return, will leverage the equity to raise funds from the market.

“IRDSC will make the investments and revenue will be kept by it. IRSDC will keep 10% of the revenue for itself and it should leave enough money to pay back loans and the railways,” added the official.

The ministry of railways is also seeking approval to nominate public-sector undertakings to overcome situations wherein the proposed nodal agency is unable to start work on multiple stations simultaneously or fails to find a financially viable plan, as reported earlier.

The station redevelopment model is being revisited as the ‘Swiss challenge’ bidding process evoked lukewarm interest. The revamped public-private partnership model is expected to offer more attractive terms for private investors (with longer lease period of 99 years as against the 45 years proposed earlier), residential premises being part of the assets created and multiple sub-leases being allowed rather than just one.

In a move that could bring cheer to rail wagon makers, the railway ministrywill tweak tendering norms for wagon procurement that will provide clarity on the demand from the national transporter for the next five years.

The ministry has decided to give wagon contracts in bulk with demand of five years with bucket filling. It will conduct reverse e-auction and intends to save 20-25% in cost, a top rail ministry official said. The Indian Railways procures 12,000 wagons per annum, costing around Rs 3,500 crore.

“Instead of going for piece-meal tenders, we will go for bulk tenders where the lowest bidder would be given an option to provide for railway’s future demands at the same price. This will give vendors a future outlook and they will benefit from economies of scale along with offering the lowest price to us,” the official said.

During an Infrastructure Roundtable in January, various rail vendors, including Titagarh Wagons Ltd, had sought more clarity on future rail contracts from Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani. Companies such as Texmaco Rail and Engineering, Titagarh Wagons, Jindal Rail and Jupiter Wagons, which are the railway’s largest wagon providers, are likely to benefit from this decision.

The ministry has also decided to carry out all railway procurement and contracts under the reverse auction route through electronic mode. The railways has been following a ‘two packets system of tendering’ for procurement, a system considered less transparent by experts. Under this system, tender quotations are submitted in two sealed envelopes, one containing the technical and commercial offers and the other the financial bids. Such a physical system of bidding has loopholes and potential for rigging, experts say.

The same tendering system will also be followed for other bulk contracts that the railways intends to give, including the upcoming signalling overhauling contract of the country’s entire rail route length of 120,000 km and the contracts for electrification, elevators at stations and CCTVs.

The Jhansi division of North Central Railways (NCR) will soon introduce high-definition cameras to monitor undercarriage of trains that halt at the junction in a bid to inspect the locomotive for faults or damaged parts. The cameras will record and give real-time assessment of damages, aiding officials in taking prompt action.

Gaurav Bansal, Chief Public Relations Officer of NCR, said, “Conventionally, the undercarriage of trains, which includes wheel sets, suspension, brakes and other devices, were manually inspected by two or three workers from the outside while the train in is movement. At night, these men either use torch or flood lights to locate or find damaged parts and alert loco pilots. With these new cameras installed on tracks at both ends of the platform, inspection of the undercarriages will be thorough.”

Wear and tear of train carriages takes place mostly in the summer months, added Bansal. “No division of the Indian Railways has introduced this technology,” he said.

The Jhansi junction has seven platforms and sees a traffic of around 150 express as well as mail trains. Divisional commercial manager of Jhansi division, Neeraj Bhatnagar, said, “Funds for the cameras have been approved. Soon, these will be installed. We are also going to upgrade the CCTV cameras in the stations for better surveillance.”