Demand for trains goes up, no restoration of full services yet

Full restoration of services would have to wait as the Covid restrictions are still in place, Railways Board Chairman and CEO Suneet Sharma Sharma said.

Demand for train services has increased, as around 13 lakh people are using trains to commute every day this month, up from 5 lakh last month, the Indian Railways said on Tuesday.

However, full restoration of services would have to wait as the Covid restrictions are still in place, Railways Board Chairman and CEO Suneet Sharma Sharma said.

“Train services will continue to be provided as per demand. We are ready to normalise operations but a timeline cannot be given because of the Covid situation,” he said.

Currently, 889 Special Mail Express trains are running on an average every day along with 2,891 suburban services. In addition, 26 special trains are being run as clones of highly patronized trains and 479 passenger services are in operation.

Sharma also said that to clear extra rush 500 additional trains are being run during April-May-June 2021. These trains are for destinations having high demand like Gorakhpur, Patna, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Varanasi, Guwahati, Manduadih, Barauni, Prayagraj, Bokaro, Ranchi, Lucknow and Kolkata.

Around 8,733 people died on railway tracks between January and December 2020. These are counted as trespassing deaths and not Railway accidents, the CEO added.

He said that over the past two years 448 foot overbridges have been constructed by the railways, taking the total number of such bridges in the rail network to 4,087.

Similarly, 7,874 road overbridges have been constructed in the last seven years with 168 in the last fiscal and 951 in 2020-21. All the 20,375 manned level crossing gates on the broad-gauge network have been eliminated.