Last week, Indian Railway officials in the Agra division noticed six instances of trains hitting cattle within a few days on a stretch near Dholpur. Immediately, a team was sent to the spot, which found a gap on the side of a ROB on a highway through which cattle were straying onto the rail tracks. The gap was plugged, IE reported. According to their report, this marks one of the early successes of the Smart Event Tracking System (SETS), which is a new tool on Google Maps-based planning and analysis that has been deployed to tackle the growing problem of cattle getting run over by trains. Shivam Sharma, North Central Railway spokesperson was quoted in the report saying that the software seems to be giving promising results.
The software has been made functional in Agra Division and it will be adopted by other divisions in the future, depending on further results. According to officials, the SETS map the kilometre stamps on electrical masts along the rail tracks and feed the exact location of a “cattle run over” into the system. As a result of this, managers are able to identify the location instantly where the cattle run over occurred as well as spot a pattern, in case of any, an official stated. The officials, within days of deployment, were able to plug another gap at a level crossing. Following the inspection, it was found that the gateman was missing, the official further said.
According to the report, the system is particularly important for the North Central Railway zone, which saw more than 6,500 of the 26,000 cases of cattle run over that were recorded in the year 2020-21. The North Central Railway, covering over 3,000 km of tracks, hosts parts of the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors. It includes divisions like Agra, Jhansi and Prayagraj, and is the gateway for trains from the east to reach the northern parts of India.
The Agra division is now planning to use the software, developed by Senior Electronic Data Processing Manager Sahil Garg, to map locations as well as patterns in incidents of chain-pulling, Sharma said. If there is any chain-pulling at a certain location frequently, railways can take action accordingly. Also, based on feedback there can be need-based modifications and additions, he said. The Northern Railway zone recorded the highest number of cattle run over cases of nearly 6,800 spread across the divisions of Moradabad and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Firozpur in Punjab, Ambala in Haryana, and Delhi, officials said.