Patna: East Central Railway (ECR) has decided to eliminate 268 unmanned level crossings out of 605 by December 2018, taking lessons from the death of 13 children in a train accident at an unmanned level crossing in Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar on Thursday.
Underpasses or foot overbridges will be built at unmanned level crossings. Presently, there are 1,833 level crossings under the ECR section of which 1,228 are manned and 605 unmanned.
ECR chief public relations officer Rajesh Kumar told The Telegraph: "Not only ECR, it is a learning experience for everyone that how dangerous unmanned level crossings can be. However, the railways is always firm on providing safe journey to passengers and with this move, ECR has taken the decision to eliminate unmanned level crossings by providing alternatives like underpass and foot overbridge."
ECR has got the most number of unmanned level crossings in Samastipur division followed by Mughalsarai, Danapur, Sonepur and Dhanbad division. Even Union minister of railways Piyush Goyal on Thursday chaired a detailed meeting with the Railway Board chairman and members, including the chief commissioner of railway safety. During the meeting, he reviewed the plan to completely eliminate unmanned level crossings from the Indian Railway.
Indian Railway has taken many steps towards reducing accidents at unmanned level crossings with 79 per cent reduction in accidents in the last four years (47 accidents in 2013-14 reduced to 10 in 2017-18). The average rate of elimination of unmanned level crossings has also increased by nearly two-thirds over the past four years. Now, only 3,479 at unmanned level crossings remain on the broad gauge network.
A senior railway official stressed that the railways should not be entirely blamed as it is also the people's duty to cross unmanned level crossing carefully. "There are places like Ara where the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has to show the gun to stop vehicles because and they do not listen and the train are stopped. The situation is similar at Gulzarbagh unmanned level crossing. Once the barricading is removed, it does not close for hours. It is completely the people's fault, they do not have common sense," said a senior official of ECR, posted in Danapur division.
Even in the Kushinagar case, an eyewitness said the van driver had his earphones plugged in owing to which he did not listen the train hoot and also the instructions of the gate mitra (rail volunteer). Even in ECR, gate mitras are deployed at all unmanned level crossings.
