The Vande Bharat fiasco and the choked arteries of the nation’s lifeline
The recent CAG reports paint a bleak future for safety, punctuality, and stagnant speed of trains on Indian Railway with an extremely high rate of track, signalling, and train failures. Acute congestion is the result of amazing bungling and antiquated procedures
Alok Kumar Verma, Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) retd. alumnus IIT/KGP and IIT/Delhi
The latest manifestation of the failure to create a vision for the future of rail transport in India as mobility needs changed dramatically in the 1990s is the spectacle of the #VandeBharat trains failing to increase the speed of trains in India despite high expectations. Journey times have not been significantly shortened by the Vande Bharat trains.
In actuality, the four train pairs that were introduced in the previous month managed to travel at an average speed of less than 70 kmph, which is much slower than the existing #Rajdhani and #Shatabdi trains’ average speeds of 80 to 90 kmph. Trains should operate at a maximum speed of 200тАУ250 kmph, with an average speed of 150тАУ200 kmph, in order to effectively compete with the road and the air.
This is not the first time expectations of faster travel have been dashed. In 2000тАУ10, India failed to raise the speed of trains despite having built a growing fleet of coaches (#LHB) and locomotives (#ABB) capable of 160 kmph (upgradable to 200 kmph) train operations. Thus, despite importing technologies for faster trains, India has repeatedly failed to upgrade the #track and #signalling necessary to operate those trains at those faster speeds.
We must consider how mobility needs have changed over the past 30 years in order to fully understand why this has happened.
During the first 20 years of economic liberalization, from 1990 to 2010, India’s road and air transportation systems experienced rapid expansion. As people started using cars and airplanes, travel times drastically decreased. However, because India did not modernize its extensive railway network, the benefits of increased mobility were limited to just about 5% of the population who could afford personal cars and air travel.
Indian Railway has about 15,000 km of trunk routes that are the main arteries of the national rail network, which, despite sluggish growth, remains one of the largest in the world both in terms of route length and #Passenger and #Freight traffic that it carries. India made a mistake by concentrating on gauge conversion to convert the slower Meter Gauge lines to Broad Gauge and by doubling the secondary routes from single track to double track lines.
Under Project Unigauge, India changed about 22,000 km of MG lines to BG lines and about 18,000 km of single-track lines to double-track lines in the past 30 years. However, it completely disregarded the 15,000 km of trunk routes by not constructing any new lines on them. A total of 7,000 km of new lines were constructed, the majority of which are secondary and tertiary lines.
China, which was going through a similar mobility revolution, upgraded about 10,000 km of its trunk routes and added an astounding 32,704 km of new lines between 1990 and 2010 to increase the capacity and speed of both passenger and freight traffic. All of this took place prior to #China starting its ambitious project to construct about 40,000 km of high-speed and ultra-high-speed lines, primarily for daytime intercity business travel (these lines also carry some overnight sleeper trains).
India should have built at least 15,000 new double-track lines along these arterial routes to increase #capacity and #speed. The major rail arteries, however, are currently severely congested, which has caused the average speed to stagnate while #punctuality and #safety have gotten worse. Regular #maintenance and necessary safety inspections have taken a hit. This has led to an alarmingly high rate of rail fractures, as well as #signalling and #interlocking failures.
Inadequate maintenance has also resulted in a great deal of ongoing speed restrictions that impede the movement of trains. In its recent reports on #punctuality and #derailments (safety), the #CAG has expensively addressed these problems. These reports have gathered useful information that aids in a correct understanding of the scope of the issues and failures to address those issues.
The recent CAG reports paint a bleak future for safety, punctuality, and stagnant speed of trains on Indian Railway with an extremely high rate of track, signalling, and train failures. Acute congestion is the result of amazing bungling and antiquated procedures.
The #Balasore tragedy, in which three trains collided, resulting in 293 fatalities and over a thousand serious injuries, serves as a reminder of the issues with India’s trunk lines. The #accident, on one of the main trunk lines (#Kolkata to #Chennai), which connects eastern India with southern India, was caused by a signalling and interlocking failure at the Bahanaga Bazaar station, which diverted the #CoromandelExpress onto a loop line rather than the main line, according to the #Commissioner of Railway Safety’s report, which was submitted about a week ago. This collision took place.
The #RailwayBoard, the supreme body with complete control over #IndianRailways, has operated in complete chaos, deceit, and secrecy for the past 15 years. It abruptly foisted on the country the following two ill-conceived plans in a knee-jerk response to the growing crisis of inadequate capacity, slow trains, and subpar safety and punctuality performance.
i) The plan to build an ultra-high-speed #BulletTrain line (operational speed of 350 kmph) on the (British) Standard Gauge from #Mumbai to #Ahmedabad, which mysteriously grew into a much larger plan to build a separate and exclusive network of about 10,000 km of dedicated lines to run the Bullet Trains and even the slower 200тАУ250 kmph high-speed lines. The adoption of #Standard_Gauge is bizarre and at odds with the global practice of creating an integrated network of line-lines with full interoperability in three speed bands (conventional, high speed, and ultra high speed) to maximize capacity utilization, lower costs, and achieve the greatest range.
ii) To create a national network of lines that are solely used to transport freight in long, heavy, and large (heavy haul) freight trains. These routes were referred to as Dedicated Freight Corridors (#DFC). This is no less absurd and inconsistent with the general practice around the world of constructing new, specifically designed passenger lines to reach higher speeds while utilizing the existing lines (which will have extra capacity after the high speed lines are built) to carry freight trains (traveling at speeds between 100 and 120 kmph) and regular passenger trains (traveling at speeds between 120 and 160 kmph).
The #failure to construct #safe, #secure, and #reliable lines in the strategic #Himalayan regions is another catastrophe that should be mentioned. With incredibly slow #construction progress and the collapse of partially completed #tunnels, #bridges, and #cuttings over the past 20 years, the #KashmirRailLink and the six other projects are in disarray. This is the outcome of yet another oddity: the complete failure to conduct the essential ground investigation while preparing alignments for these lines. It is concerning that India has not built any lines on this side of the Himalayas given that China recently began building the high-capacity Sichuan Tibet and Yunnan Tibet lines, which will bring that country’s railway network closer to India.
It is hoped that with railway facing a terminal decline, a rapidly shrinking market share, and appalling #safety and #punctuality, the nation’s #policymakers will recognize that the mobility needs of people cannot be satisfied by the booming road and air transport systems while the vast #railway system is neglected and mismanaged.