Railways using tech, DFCs to ease movement amid Chhath rush: Vaishnaw

Sincere effort to ease movement within constraints, says minister

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Amid the festival rush and overcrowding in trains and stations, the Ministry of Railways is using heat maps, real-time traffic data analysis, permanent holding areas, and the dedicated freight corridors (DFCs) to ease passenger movement, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

 

“There were over 7,700 special train trips last year, and this number will go beyond 13,000 this year. There is a very sincere effort to manage festival rush within the overall constraints. We will use the learnings from this year to do even better next festival season,” Vaishnaw said during a media interaction at the Railways’ war room in Rail Bhawan.

 

The minister said war rooms with multiple live feeds have been set up at the division, zone, and railway board levels. The ministry will also set up permanent holding areas at 76 stations by the time the festival season arrives next year, he added.

 

“About 10,700 special train trips have been notified, and 3,000 trains have been kept for peak movement. The first peak is past us, and the second wave of peak movement is expected to take place now, after workers receive their bonuses,” said Vaishnaw.

 

The Railways is using station heat maps to analyse traffic data every hour at 35 stations that see the heaviest passenger movement and using that data for predictive resource deployment. “We analyse data from the past two years and feed it into a model to determine how many trains are required for each destination,” the minister said.

 

The ministry is also using the dedicated freight corridor to ease congestion around the heavily congested Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction — trains are being operated on the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor.

 

Officials said that after special trains ferry passengers to Bihar, their return journeys — instead of using regular tracks — are being undertaken on the dedicated freight corridors. “There has been minimal impact on freight because of this, but a lot of the freight operations were streamlined in advance anticipating this requirement,” said a top official.