Rlys strives for punctuality

| | New Delhi

In a move to optimise the railway time table, use of railway stations and other rolling stocks like utilisation of coaches and engines, a massive overhaul of the system is being planned by joining hands with Japan and the use of integrated software systems.

With punctuality being an issue in the railway network, the Railways is considering to adapt a Japanese software to help plan its train timetable, enabling it to account for every second on the railway network.

A group of technical experts from Japan held a meeting with officials of the Transformation Cell and Coaching departments on Wednesday in which a presentation was made on a cloud-based transit scheduling system, TrueLine, developed by Toshiba.

A railway official said that if all goes well then eventually IR’s software-based integrated planning service will be modelled on TrueLine.

“The software is used to maximise utilisation of tracks, engine, manpower and coaches. It will tell us the number of halts a train needs and the time for each halt to ensure punctuality. It will help us plan rolling stock and how best to utilise them. The app has to however be modified in accordance with the Indian scenario,” said the ministry official said.

TrueLine is currently being used by the Saitama Railway Corporation, which is a mostly underground rapid transit line in Japan and the Tokyo Waterfront New Transit Waterfront Line. It is controlled entirely by computers with no drivers on board.

The system, the official said, would greatly improve accuracy and would automatically output reports related to creating timetables.

In the latest time table published by the railways, the national transporter cut short the running time of over 500 long distance trains by up to two hours.

The railways also incorporated “innovative timetabling” under which running time of popular trains was reduce by 15 minutes to two hours and each railway division was given two to four hours for maintenance works. As of now, most of the scheduling work is done manually by the railways.