Rail signalling spend may see big jump

To reduce accidents, especially collisions, the railway ministry plans to increase its spend on signalling by 360 per cent in next year's rail budget.

This year's budget had an allocation of Rs 1,528 crore for signalling. The figure, ministry sources said, might go up to Rs 7,000 crore next year.

Signalling is the backbone of the railway system, playing a major role in managing the heavy rail traffic in India. Transport experts pointed out that railways were spending as little as Rs 100-200 crore on strengthening of the signalling infrastructure till the late 1990s.

Even in 2001-02, the rail budget allocated a mere Rs 386 crore for the purpose. It is only in the last three years that the allocation has seen a jump, touching a high of Rs 1528 crore this fiscal.

Neglect of this core sector is evident from the fact that track-circuiting of only one-fourth of the entire 63,465 km of rail lines has been done till date.

A track circuit is fitted on rail tracks at a distance of every 40 to 400 m and conveys a message to the control room as soon as a train is in its vicinity.

This leads to closure of the specific section when a train is to pass through, so that no other train is on that section at that time. The system mainly helps in averting head-on collision of trains.

At present, track-circuiting of A, B and C routes, i.e. the routes connecting the four metros and the state capitals is almost complete (95 per cent).

But this is only one-fourth of the entire network, with the rest of the lines, ministry sources said, being track-circuited only by 2010.

Though allocation for signalling forms only 3-4 per cent of the railway budget, it has helped considerably in reducing collisions.

While in the 1990s, on an average 70 to 80 collisions occurred annually, this number came down to 15 in 2005. Considering that every rail accident needs an average 10 hours to clear the affected stretch, track-circuiting becomes even more significant.