Anti collision device for railways will be introduced in two years: Lalu Prasad

New Delhi, Feb 26 : Railways Minister Lalu Prasad on Tuesday announced that the Anti Collision Device would be introduced in Southern, South Central and South Western Railway in the next two years.

This follows encouraging results from the North East Frontier Railways where a Pilot Project is already in place.

A multi-pronged scheme has been prepared to reduce human failure. It envisages provision of automatic safety devices.

Lalu said that sustained efforts have led to significant improvement in safety and consequential fall in accidents that has come down from 234 in 2005-06 to 195 in 2006-07.

Train accidents per million train kilometres have come down to 0.23 in 2006-07 as compared to 0.28 in 2005-06.

The work of replacing 16538 kilometres (KM) of overage track and overage signals at 2359 stations and rehabilitation of 2251 bridges utilizing Special Railway Safety Fund would be completed by the end of this year.

Railways are also taking due precaution to make adequate provision under Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF) for timely replacement of overage assets. The provision in DRF has been increased to Rs. 7000 crore in 2008-09 from Rs. 5450 in 2007-08.

ANI