Need few lakh crores to eliminate level crossings: Goyal

The Railways need a few lakh crore rupees and a few years to eliminate all 21,000 manned level crossing across the country, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Goyal said there were 21,340 Manned Level Crossings (MLCs) and 1,048 Unmanned Level Crossings (UMLCs) in the country as on April 1, 2019.

"We need a few lakh crores rupees and a few years to completely eliminate all 21,000 manned level crossings," he said during Question Hour.

The money is required to construct underpass or overbridges to replace the railway level crossings.

The minister said out of the 21,340 manned level crossings, 20,993 are on broad gauge (BG), 136 are on metre gauge and 211 are on narrow gauge.

Goyal said so far as gauge-wise breakup of unmanned level crossings are concerned, record number of of 3,479 unmanned level crossings were eliminated in 2018-19 out of which 1,714 were eliminated in one month i.e. September 2018.

"As of now, all UMLCs on broad gauge have been eliminated on January 31, 2019, 348 UMLCs exist on metre gauge and 700 UMLCs are on narrow gauge," he said.