Minister of Railways, Piyush Goyal today announced that around 6000 railway stations will now Be wifi- enabled within the next 6-8 months. This was a part of the ‘Smart Railways Conclave’ organised by the FICCI, Goyal stated that the railways are now focusing on enhancing the network and have a ‘smarter’ project implementation. He claims that it is necessary for India’s communication systems to develop for the nation to progress substantially.
“The railways is working on a programme to ensure the last mile connectivity wherever we do not have fibre optics in our network. We are hopeful that in the next six-to-eight months, all railway stations, other than the halt stations, about 6,000 stations will be WiFi-enabled,” said Goyal in the conference.
Emphasising how necessary these junctions are in need of development, he also spoke that it was exactly “ the change that you would have seen in the last four years.” On punctuality of trains, the minister said that between April 1 and till the date, punctuality has improved to 73-74%.
The suggestion has also come from the Ministry to install a GPS system for each train to track their location and keep the people informed about their location. Speaking of which he said,
“For Railways, it is a network working 22000 trains a day, chugging from remotest corners and smart solutions have to found within this frame. For punctuality, instead of the station master recording the time, data loggers have been put at interchange points which would be computer generated.”
There have also been claims from the Ministry that they are embarking on an efficient mission which will help save around $2 billion every year. He said that railways’ focus will shift on removing permanent speed restrictions, getting 1,50,000 bridges audited and improved, once the work of switching to smarter signalling gets complete’.