Indian Railways drawn up Rs 34,000 cr safety upgrade

The Indian Railways has drawn up a Rs 34,000 crore safety upgrade of its network that includes the deployment of an automated train safety system Kavach.

The aim is to ensure safe railway travel while reducing collisions and accidents.

The railway works programme of 2020-21 and 2021-22 includes the deployment system plans along a 34,000 km route.

A senior rail ministry official told the media that in two years, tenders for the Kavach deployment across the whole 68,446 route kilometer (RKM) would be issued, and within the coming five years, it will be finished.

Project Kavach's cost is Rs 50 lakh per km, a fourth compared with Rs two crore that similarly improved safety measures cost in other parts of the world.

The lower cost would also assist Indian vendors to compete in the worldwide market for the deployment of these technologies.

The official revealed that the overall outlay for the deployment is nearly Rs 34,000 crore. In October 2012, the conceptual field trial occurred, and the project has been under the work since then.

According to a rail ministry note, in February 2016, the first field trial on the passenger trains began and based on the experience, the initial Kavach version verifications were completed in May 2018.

In 2020-21, the safety project was approved for speeds up to 160 km per hour and automatic block signalling.

The Indian Railways is seeking the development of more suppliers for this technology.

Till now, in the South Central Railway, Kavach has been deployed in 1,098 RKM and 65 locomotives in ongoing projects.

It would be executed on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors (covering nearly 3,000 RKM) as part of the Mission Raftar project to increase train speed.

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