New Delhi: The Indian Railways failure to make adequate investments and complete works for augmentation of station line capacity is one of the reasons resulting in train delays, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General report submitted in Parliament on Tuesday. The audit conducted with an objective to assess whether the available infrastructure is adequate for handling the present and expected traffic load studied 15 railway stations across the country with maximum traffic. These included Allahabad, Kanpur, Mathura, Mughalsarai, Chennai Central, Howrah, Bhopal, Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
The audit found that due to non-availability of platforms, trains have to wait at outer signals or the adjacent station until the platform is vacated. Passenger trains on an average across these 15 stations were detained for 15 to 25 minutes due to non-availability of platforms. Passenger trains were often started late from some selected station by more than 15 minutes and up to 74 minutes at all the selected stations expect Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Chennai Central.
The audit report also found that the detention of goods trains was significantly higher from 21 minutes to 100 minutes per goods train on all selected stations except Delhi, New Delhi, Howrah and Chennai Central.
The audit report states that important activities such as providing platform with adequate length for facilitating easy boarding/de-boarding of passengers travelling in trains with longer lengths, providing adequate facilities for stabling and maintenance of trains in stations, adequate yard capacity, and washing pit lines contribute significantly in timely arrival and departure of trains.
However, the audit observes that these activities are not part of any of the stations’ redevelopment plans, which mainly address facilities for passengers and the facade.
The auditor said that poor service quality by Indian Railways was a result of the national carrier’s inability to keep infrastructure development in step with growing traffic.
Indian Railways has one of the biggest railway networks in the world with 67,368 km of track and 7,349 railway stations. In 2016-17, Indian Railways carried 22.24 million passengers per day and operated 13,329 passenger trains daily.