Parliament Standing Committee on Railways has urged the Ministry to work on measures initiated to achieve the targets set for completion of the Road Over Bridges (ROBs) and Road Under Bridges (RUBs) towards elimination of manned level crossings since they have not been met during the last three years.
It has noted that in 2021-22, against the target of construction of 1,100 ROB/RUBs, 994 were built, the next year 22-23, 880 were built as against a target of 1,000, in 23-24 it has been 1,078 as against 1,100 and till September 2024, it has been just 369 as against 1,100.
The Committee under the chairmanship of BJP AP MP C.M. Ramesh said that while all unmanned level crossings, which were a huge safety hazard, have been eliminated in 2019 itself, there are 17,053 manned level crossings across Indian Railways, including 1,095 in SCR zone.
Railway officials attributed the major reasons for delay in ROBs/RUBs related projects to delays in getting funds for sharing cost of the works, land acquisition, shifting of utilities and so on, by the respective State Governments. As per the previous policy, level crossings having more than one lakh vehicles movement were considered for construction of ROB/RUB on cost sharing basis with the States.
But, last year it was decided that stalled works, where there was no response from the States, should be taken up with 100% railway cost by revising the estimates except those projects on national highways or where the states/local bodies want to take it up.
About 16 such cost sharing works have been revised and many other estimates are in different stages of revision. This came in for appreciation by the Parliament Committee.
The MPs were happy to note that funds for ROBs/RUBs for 2024-25 has been kept at ₹9,874.69 crore which shows a significant increase from 2023-24 when it was ₹6,097.39 crores. The panel was informed that a web based online approval system has been created for speedy approvals with standardised designs and drawings reducing the process to 60 days from 70 days.
Published – January 31, 2025 09:27 am IST