Southern Railway officials on Thursday took up awareness programmes at schools and level crossing gates across Madurai division on the occasion of International Level Crossing Awareness Day being observed on June 6.
Officials, led by Additional Divisional Railway Manager Lalith Kumar Mansukhani, visited schools and LC gates and interacted with students and road users on safe passage at railway gates. Pamphlets asking road users not to pass through level crossing gates when they remained closed and asking people to wait patiently till the gates were opened after rail movement and other messages were distributed.
Vehicle users were also appealed to avoid reckless driving to prevent causing damage to level crossing gates. “Besides safety concerns, level crossing gates, when closed, cause delay for either rails users or vehicles. In both situations, it is the passengers or common people who are affected,” said Mr. Mansukhani.
Stating that as part of the nation-wide programme of eliminating level crossing gates, Madurai Railway Division had taken up 113 unmanned gates for closure, either by constructing subways or through diversion or by manning them. While 72 of them were taken up for constructing limited usage subways, six were closed by diverting road traffic through nearest level crossing gates. The rest were manned.
Pointing that in some places people were opposing to construction of subways in lieu of level crossing gates, he said that railway engineers had demonstrated that the subways had enough height even for harvester vehicles to pass through. “We need a minimum safe distance of 4.5 metres from the overhead electric cables that carry 25 kilovolts of power,” he added.
He sought cooperation from the people in going ahead with subways where construction of road overbridges were not viable.