Steps that Indian Railways is Taking to Improve Punctuality of Trains

Indian Railways (IR) constantly endeavours to run trains punctually.

However, trains on Indian Railways do lose punctuality due to factors related to internal factors  (mainly attributable to equipment failures related to locomotives, Over Head Electrical cables, track, signal, mechanical etc. & saturated line capacity, etc) as well as external factors (like electricity grid failures, public agitations, adverse weather conditions, etc.) of which Railways are not in control. 

In order to address the issue of punctuality, Railways has taken numerous steps including:

1. Rigorous monitoring at Divisional, Zonal and Railway Board levels etc.
2. Removal of infrastructure bottlenecks including saving train maintenance time in a planned manner.
3. Standardization of rakes and provision of spare rakes to improve punctuality.
4. Integrated Mega Blocks are planned in such a way that all asset maintenance departments can do their work simultaneously.
5. End to end running of some trains with diesel locomotives to avoid detention on account of loco changing from diesel to electric.
6. Conversion of conventional rakes of Mail/Express trains (Integral Coach Factory rakes) into LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch) rakes.
7. Rationalization of Time Table in order to make a group of similar speed trains.
8. Curtailment of stoppage time at major terminals etc.

Further, reduction of Pit-Line examination time and maintenance time is an identified priority of Indian Railways.  A study has been commissioned for examining the reduction in Pit-Line examination time.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.