For passenger convenience, Indian Railways has asked all its zones to maintain punctuality of all Mail and Express trains across its network. This development comes at a time when the special session of Parliament is underway and several Members of Parliament (MPs) are arriving in the national capital via train.
In an email sent to all the zonal headquarters, the Railway Board (RB) has directed to deploy officers at major terminals for round-the-clock monitoring to ensure the punctuality of the trains. It further added that zonal heads have to ensure the right time start and punctual running of services.
The Board has instructed General Managers (GMs) and other senior officers responsible for ensuring the efficient and safe functioning of train services to tackle any issues that may affect the punctuality of service operations.
Railway Board’s advisory over punctuality of trains:-
- Asset failures to be monitored.
- Speedy rectification of asset failures to be ensured.
- Trains to be run at the maximum permissible speed to make up the lost time.
- Excess engineering speed restriction affecting punctuality to be attended immediately.
- Normal speeds should be restored on priority.
Due to various concerted efforts, the national transporter has successfully improved trains punctuality by more than 9 per cent as compared to the pre-Covid (2019-20).
Why do trains get delayed?
The smooth operation of trains has been accorded highest priority by the Ministry of Railways. However, it gets delayed due to various factors such as inadequate infrastructure, increasing passenger and freight traffic, line capacity, terminal capacity, adverse weather conditions, intermittent natural calamities, heavy road traffic at level crossing gates, law and order problems etc.