Not two years, 200 projects finished during lockdown: Railways

NEW DELHI: Utilising the nationwide lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, the Indian Railways completed 200 works to remove bottlenecks and improve passenger safety. Completing these works would have taken two years during normal times, railway board chairman V K Yadav said, since getting long-duration track blockages are difficult.
The works included rebuilding and rehabilitation of 82 bridges, 48 limited height subways and road under bridge in lieu of level crossing gates, construction and strengthening of 16 foot over bridges (FOBs), dismantling of 14 old FOBs and remodeling of five yards.
Yadav said some of these pending works created bottlenecks for railways and their completion would help increased speed of trains on such sections.
An official release said, “Indian Railways focused on several long pending overdue maintenance works which required traffic block of long durations…They were planned during lockdown period considering it ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to wipe out these maintenance arrears and take up the execution of work without affecting the train service.”
Railways completed two projects of doubling with electrification in Varanasi division. These projects resulted in decongestion of east-west routes and facilitation of freight movement.