{"id":247381,"date":"2023-06-10T20:13:13","date_gmt":"2023-06-10T14:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=247381"},"modified":"2023-06-10T20:13:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T14:43:13","slug":"odisha-train-collision-solutions-that-dont-take-railways-back-to-business-as-usual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/odisha-train-collision-solutions-that-dont-take-railways-back-to-business-as-usual\/","title":{"rendered":"Odisha train collision: Solutions that don\u2019t take Railways back to business-as-usual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source-<\/strong> The post is based on the article \u201cOdisha train collision: Solutions that don\u2019t take Railways back to business-as-usual\u201d published in the \u201cThe Indian Express\u201d on 10th June 2023.<\/p>\n

Syllabus: <\/strong>GS3- Infrastructure<\/p>\n

Relevance- <\/strong>Issues related to safety of railways<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>– Recently, there was death of nearly 300 passengers in a train accident at Balasore in Odisha. It has drawn attention to the safety preparedness of the Indian Railways.<\/p>\n

What are issues related to operation and maintenance that impacts the safety of railways?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are issues of highly-congested trunk routes<\/strong>. This generates pressure, both on operations and maintenance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Excess time for maintenance<\/strong> means slow operations<\/strong>. Focussing on train operations without sufficient time for maintenance means a more failure-prone system. <\/strong><\/p>\n

A system of providing traffic blocks<\/strong> in the passenger timetable already exists. Time is allocated for maintenance along a route, where no trains are scheduled. Earlier, there was discretion in the utilisation<\/strong> of this block period.<\/p>\n

The reason for providing discretion was to give operations sufficient room to deal with train delays or to push unscheduled freight trains.<\/p>\n

Today, it is still not a complete solution even though blocks are granted as required by the maintenance departments.<\/p>\n

There is a lack of mutually agreed annual plan <\/strong>between the maintenance departments and the operations department for coordinated use of the traffic block.<\/p>\n

The second issue is directly connected to the recent mishap. There was tampering with the signalling equipment. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It has been suggested that the immense pressure on the field staff at highly congested routes <\/strong>leads to the adoption of shortcuts. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The current practice of a disconnection memo<\/strong> to the station master from the signal maintainer followed by a connection memo is not strictly followed.<\/p>\n

The staff is under severe strain to minimise failures and ensure that trains are not detained due to a failure.<\/p>\n

The two-agency authorization<\/strong> for opening the relay room, where all the sensitive equipment <\/strong>resides, is violated. Other equipment like junction boxes and point machines are protected with seals but again these can be broken.<\/p>\n

What is the way forward to resolve these issues?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are a couple of measures that could address the systemic constraints. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The basic idea is improvement at systemic level<\/strong> and move away from a reliance on the ingenuity of the individual.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is possible to make an annual plan of maintenance and map<\/strong> it on the block corridors so that all infrastructure assets are maintained.<\/p>\n

There is a need to internalise the paper memo process<\/strong> and the physical locks and seals as part of the electronic system. It needs to develop the necessary software <\/strong>and implement it in the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source- The post is based on the article \u201cOdisha train collision: Solutions that don\u2019t take Railways back to business-as-usual\u201d published in the \u201cThe Indian Express\u201d on 10th June 2023. Syllabus: GS3- Infrastructure Relevance- Issues related to safety of railways News– Recently, there was death of nearly 300 passengers in a train accident at Balasore in… Continue reading Odisha train collision: Solutions that don\u2019t take Railways back to business-as-usual<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[216,10500],"class_list":["post-247381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1703363440},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}