File photo used for representation only

NEW DELHI: Travel by trains is set to become safer as railways claims to have carried out renewal of 4,405km of old tracks in 2017-18 — the highest ever in a financial year.

An official statement said, “This is the highest ever progress of track renewal (primary) and exceeds the target of 4,389km (revised to 4,400km) for the year.”

The state-run transporter said that the previous best was 4,175km in 2004-05 due to the deployment of the special rail safety fund which was set up during Atal Bihari Vajpayee ’s regime.

As per railways data, during March 2018, 642km rail renewal was carried out, which is the best ever progress in any month.

The previous best were 576km in January 2018 and 523km in March 2005.

The transporter has a network of total track length of 1,14,907 kilometres and of this, on an average 4,500 kilometres of track should ideally be renewed annually.

But, due to financial constraints, the progress of track renewals was constantly coming down in past years which resulted in huge backlog of around 5,000km track for renewal and led to several accidents due to derailments.

The transporter has said the government accorded the highest priority to safety in train operations, due to which a number of derailments during the period between April, 2017 and February, 2018 had come down to 53, as compared to 76 from April, 2016 to February, 2017.

Railways said that in order to liquidate the arrears of track renewal and improve safety in train operations, a Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh of Rs 1 lakh crore to be spent over a five-year period was announced in the budget for 2017-18.

It stated that in view of the shortfall in supply of rails by SAIL vis-a-vis the annual requirement, a decision was taken in September, 2017 to give priority to supply of rails for track renewals, as compared to new construction projects.

It was also decided to procure rails from the open market to meet the shortfall.

After taking over the charge as Union railways minister, Piyush Goyal directed that track renewal be fast-tracked.

He had also asked railway officials to divert tracks from the construction of new lines to the accident prone areas where replacement was long overdue.

The zones were asked to ensure the availability of traffic blocks for track maintenance, even at the cost of train operations.

