Punctuality of trains improves to over 82 per cent

Railways have improved the overall punctuality rate after improvisation on the Ghaziabad- Mughalsarai route, with mail and express trains improving their performance by over four per cent to clock 80.83 per cent punctuality during April-August.
The overall punctuality rate of the railways has increased to 82.09 per cent in August from 81.62 per cent in the corresponding period last year.
The punctuality performance of mail/express trains during April-August this year was 80.83 per cent as compared to 76.66 per cent for the corresponding period last year, an increase of 4.17 per cent.
Besides, the punctuality rate of local trains between April and August this year was 77.45 per cent as compared to 73.99 per cent for the same period in 2015.

The overall punctuality rate has improved because of a series of steps being undertaken for improvement in the 761-km-long Ghaziabad-Mughalsarai route, said a senior Railway Ministry official of the Mobility Directorate.
Flooded with complaints of late-running of trains, railways has created a Mobility Directorate to improve punctuality in passenger service and speed up freight movement.

The busy Ghaziabad-Mughalsarai corridor, which includes the Allahabad junction, involves movement of 120 trains in a day. Other important railway stations in this route are Aligarh, Moradabad, Tundla, Bareilly, Etawah, Kanpur Central, Lucknow, Mirzapur and Varanasi.
Though there are many factors affecting punctuality like over-saturated route with maximum train movement, technical glitches and asset (engine and coach) or traction failures, judicious steps are being taken to decongest the route as well as improving assets, said the official.

Other than asset failures, various constraints
/difficulties which adversely affect punctuality are numerous, such as line capacity constraints on account of increasing passenger and freight traffic, adverse weather conditions (fog, rains, breaches), intermittent natural calamities such as floods, cyclones, heavy rains; heavy road traffic at level crossing gates across the rail network.
Law and order problems, including public agitations and bandh calls in left wing extremism-affected areas, miscreant activities such as theft of railway assets, mid-section run over cases involving cattle and humans also cause delays in train operation.
Punctuality performance of mail/express trains, particularly those traversing through quadrilateral routes such as Delhi-Howrah, Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai and Howrah-Mumbai corridors have been adversely impacted as these sectors are facing severe capacity constraint due to saturated line capacity.

These routes are also intensely being used for carrying freight traffic including raw materials, coal for power generation needs, petroleum products, food grains, fertiliser, steel and export oriented container traffic.