IT Automation Keeps Indian Railways on Track
A case study on in GovernmentExecutive Summary
Since 1853, the Indian Railways, one of the world's largest and busiest rail networks, plotted train traffic across the country with a pen and paper. The railways realized that it needed to automate its processes. Here's what happened when IT took control.
Despite the colossal complexities involved in running Asia's largest rail system, with over 9,000 passenger trains, the Indian Railways covers about 63,630 kilometers of the country, ferrying 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tons of freight daily. The biggest challenge here will be - controlling its train traffic.In fact, just the broad gauge track, which is about 52,000 kilometers, carried 6,974 million passengers last year and brought in 99.8 percent of the total freight earnings of the organization. This is significant because the Indian Railways makes about 70 percent of its total revenues from the freight sector alone.
And when all that traffic is managed and controlled manually, you have a lot more reasons to worry. The railways realized that it couldn't run with manual, inaccurate and inefficient processes any longer. As the number of passengers and trains using its services increased, the need to automate its key processes intensified further.
Case Study Highlights
- With 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tons of freight daily, . The Indian railways’ biggest challenge was controlling its train traffic.
- To automate these processes, CRIS, the IT arm of the railways, rolled out a control office application (COA) a pan-India unified application to help manage train traffic across all divisions.
- The project has improved rail efficiency and safety, pushed up passenger and freight customer satisfaction, and increased revenues and efficiencies for the Indian Railways
Manual Control
The complex its network of The Indian Railways is divided into 16 zones that further breaks down to 68 divisions. Each division comprises several sections that are manned by section controllers who individually control about 200 kilometers of rail track. A section controller, manning a control office, directly interacts with the stations within his section to understand the movement of trains. Traditionally, the movement of trains - whether running between stations or departing from and arriving at stations - was recorded and plotted manually."Suppose there is a freight train and a Shatabdi is running three stations behind, the controller decides that the Shatabdi is a fast and a high-priority train. So if the freight train is running on the same track, it will delay the Shatabdi. That's why the controller needs to control the freight train at the station which has a loop line that enables the Shatabdi to overtake the freight train," explains R. Badri Narayan, GM-R&D, CRIS.
On the large grids of time-distance charts, section controllers continuously plot the movement of trains by communicating with stations. What one section controller does can affect train traffic across the nation. More importantly, it is also time-sensitive. However, this process required constant supervision and analysis by chief controllers and operations managers everyday. It was also important to check if control officers were following the rules and were not detaining trains beyond a reasonable period.
To automate these processes, CRIS, the IT arm of the railways, rolled out a control office application (COA) a pan-India unified application to help manage train traffic across all divisions.
Automatic Transmission
The project began under the aegis of the then general manager of projects at CRIS, Sanjaya Das, who later moved to Ajmer as its Divisional Railway Manager. Narayan, with the help of the original core team took over the project.
Today, the application provides real time train traffic information to division controllers, enabling quick decision making. It has enhanced transparency and accountability, by dramatically cutting down corrupt means of affecting the movement of freight trains. Despite transparency being a benefit, there was resistance from users who were not ready to change the way they worked. "The application has been built in such a way that they can't undo something just to fudge records," explains Narayan. But management refused to budge and users were left with no choice. And today, even for users, the benefits of the application are hard to ignore. Section controllers now have better visibility of train movements in their respective sections. The time consuming task of manually charting and plotting train traffic has been replaced with real-time plotting.
The app has also enabled the organization to react swiftly to abnormal traffic conditions such as accidents or inadvertent delays due to fog, for instance. It has also benefited customers. "Today, information available to us allows us to significantly improve our bottom line - customer service. Now, we can inform our customers where exactly their freight crates are, when they should expect these to reach their destinations or the expected time of arrival of passenger trains and much more," says Narayan.
The COA also interfaces with various critical systems of the organization to provide more accurate information to its passengers in terms of the arrival or departure of trains, prompt status updates to its customers about freight movements, corrective action plan for its integrated coach management. Overall, the project has improved rail efficiency and safety. "This has translated into greater passenger and freight customer satisfaction, and increased revenues and efficiencies for the Indian Railways as it can now transport increased payloads leveraging the same rail infrastructure," says Narayan.
The Person Behind It
“Today, data available to us enables us to significantly improve our bottom line: customer service.”
Other Government Case Studies
K. C. Kapoor Gives India its First-Ever Online Voting Platform
A case study on Infrastructure Management in Local State and Central GovernmentHow Gujarat's State Election Commission gave India its first-ever online voting platform and increased voter turnout by almost 20 percent.
