Indian Railways has eliminated a total of 1,035 manned level crossings across its network during the April-December 2019 period. Official data shows that there has been a jump of 190 per cent over the corresponding period, the year before. In the year 2018, the number eliminated manned level crossings stood at 357 for the April-December period, as per the official data.
According to a PTI report, the national transporter has set a target of eliminating as many as 2,568 level crossings on Indian Railways’ Golden Quadrilateral and Diagonals by the year 2023.
Piyush Goyal-chaired Railway Ministry has proposed to sanction road over bridges (ROBs) as well as road under bridges (RUBs) in places where the manned level crossings will be eliminated. Indian Railways in its road map document has stated that RUBs with water drainage system will be preferred as they are shorter in route as well as they can be implemented faster.
The national transporter would bear the entire cost of such projects with a corpus of Rs 50,000 crore from the Centre over the period of the next four years. As of now, there are a little over 19,000 manned level crossings in the country, the report said.