Indian Railways to reduce travel time taken by trains by December 2019

IRCTC is all set to increase the speed of trains to cut down the time taken to cover the destination and also make the maximum use of infrastructure across the existing rail network.
According to the news reports, Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways, has asked all the zonal railways to operate trains at the highest permitted limit.

To execute the orders of the railway ministry, all the impediments that were instrumental in the slow-running of trains such as unmanned railway crossings, non-interlocked sections and single-line operations are been removed quickly.
The railways want to run trains at the maximum allowed speed by the end of 2019. A senior railway official told a newspaper that although the railways have double broad gauge lines with electrification as well as modern locomotives and rakes, a lot of normal and superfast trains are not working to their best capacity on different routes. Therefore, the railways are focussed to resolve this issue.


In order to solve the issue of turnaround time for locomotives, which is a time-consuming factor in the functioning of trains, the railway ministry will operate more pull-push trains with locomotives at both the ends.

Reportedly, the railways have also identified the issue of overstaffing of employees. Hence, excess staff members will be deployed in operation work by their senior officials.

Meanwhile, according to the railways, the regularity of mail/express trains had become better by 67% in the April-September term of 2018 to 74% in the April-September of 2019. On the other hand, there have been no passenger casualties in the first half of 2019, yet train derailments and fire accidents have been a cause of concern for the railways. To resolve this problem without much delay, the ministry will be carrying out investigations and remedial measures.