On Indian Railways, punctuality figure for Mail/Express trains are calculated on terminating basis after a train has completed its journey. During the last one year (01.07.2014 to 30.06.2015), Indian Railways have achieved 78% punctuality for Mail/Express trains on terminating basis.
Whenever an incoming train reaches abnormally late at its destination on some unavoidable account and the lie over period does not permit the start of the outgoing link train, after maintenance at its scheduled time, the outgoing link train has to be rescheduled. During the last one year (01.07.2014 to 30.06.2015 ) 5893 trains were rescheduled due to late arrival of trains owing to various reasons.
Broadly, trains lose punctuality on Indian Railways due to factors related to its internal working as well as external factors of which Railways are not in control of. Other than asset failures, various constraints /difficulties which adversely affect punctuality are numerous such as – line capacity constraints on account of increasing passenger and freight traffic, adverse weather conditions (fog, rains, breaches); intermittent natural calamities such as floods, cyclones, heavy rains; heavy road traffic at level crossing gates across the Indian Railways network; multi faceted law and order problems, including public agitations and bandh calls in left wing extremism affected areas, miscreant activities such as theft of Railway assets; mid-section run over cases involving cattle and humans, etc.
Punctuality performance of Mail/Express trains, particularly those traversing through quadrilateral routes such as Delhi-Howrah, Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai and Howrah-Mumbai corridors have been adversely impacted as these sectors are facing severe capacity constraint due to saturated line capacity. These routes are also intensely being used for carrying freight traffic including raw materials, coal for power generation needs, petroleum products, food grains, fertilizer, steel, export oriented container traffic, etc.
train1Indian Railways has initiated various measures to improve punctuality such as prioritization of preventive maintenance of assets to minimize asset failures, capacity enhancement projects by construction of additional loop lines at stations, doubling, construction of third line corridors, automatic signaling, construction of low height subways replacing level crossings, Rail Under Bridges and Rail Over Bridges, etc. In addition, Zonal Railways have also been adviced to have better co-ordination with Civil and Police authorities of States to deal with situations arising out of law and order problems.
To ease off decongestion of traffic on the Indian Railways network, Eastern and Western dedicated freight corridors have already been sanctioned and their execution is in progress. Once these corridors become operational, punctuality performance of passenger carrying trains is likely to improve.
This information was given Minister of State in Ministry of Railways Shri Manoj Sinha in a reply to a question in Rajya Sabha Yesterday.
http://nvonews.com/five-ways-indian-railways-can-ensure-punctuality-of-trains/
Indian Railway News 