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Indian Railways set to be more punctual with new time table 
 
Ahmedabad, Dec 1 (UNI)

The world’s biggest and busiest railway network -the Indian Railways- may soon lose its ‘‘slow tag’’ when a fresh new time table comes into effect from today after over 100 years, showing reduced travel time.
 ‘‘Till now, the train time table was renewed based on the calculations of distance and time made during the British rule,’’ Divisonal Railway Manager at Ahmedabad Arvind Khare told PTI.
 ‘‘Now, we have decided not to follow history and have made a fresh time table called ’zero-based time table’ which will have arrival and departure of trains based on new calculations of time and distance made by the Indian railways,’’ Khare explained.
 The railway board recently decided that from December 1 onwards all the trains would ply as per the new time table and in which each passenger train will save at least an hour’s travel time per journey, the official said.
 The new system is specially beneficial for long-distance trains which will now have lesser stoppage time even at key junctions. Moreover, unnecessary technical and operational delays at every station will also be done away with.
 Concerned officials at all railway stations on the train journey route will be held accountable for any delay at their respective stations, the official said.

SECURITY

In a global effort to counter growing challenges of threat on mass transport systems from terrorists, the International Union of Railways has resolved to set up a security platform to exchange technologies among its 171 members countries.

 ‘‘We have resolved to set up a security platform with different focus groups, and learning from the best practices of the member countries would be one area we are looking forward to,’’ Alfred Michel, General Secretary, International Union of Railways (UIC), said at the conclusion of a two-day seminar here.

 ‘‘Learning from each other is being worked out, exchange trainings have been recommended and this meeting marked the basis for those deliberations’’ said A K Suri, Director General, Railway Protection Force (RPF).

 The security platform established after this meet would work among the 171 member countries in specific areas of co-operation in security measures, investigation and counter insurgency and prevention operations.

 ‘‘We have set up different groups within the security platform like that for passenger safety, crisis management, secure freight operations and critical infrastructure etc to look into specific areas,’’ added Michel.

 Indian Railways, in collaboration with UIC, had organised the seminar on ‘‘Growing challenges of Terrorism with special Reference to Railways’’, which was attended by over 250 experts from various countries including the US, Germany, Japan, France and Spain.

In another development,  Railway Board Chairman J P Batra said Railways have become soft target of terrorists all over the world.

 In order to meet this challenges, he said several steps including installation of CCTVs, surveillance cameras, sensors and intruder detector system were introduced.

 Unlike rest of the country’s with less railway passengers and crowds at its stations, India is facing a different task as nearly 1.25 crore passengers travel each day with hundreds of stations croweded.