The Western Railway (WR) has achieved the punctuality rate of 91.46% for the financial year 2018-19, which is the highest across all railway zones in the country.
WR also achieved the highest ever sale of scrap at ₹537 crore as part of the ‘Mission Zero Scrap’. The overall earnings of WR grew by 11.46% (year on year) and stood at ₹ 1,873 crore, surpassing the Railway Board’s target by ₹674 crore. Its earning from scrap was the highest among all railway zones. The Ahmedabad division and the Mumbai division ranked first and fourth among all divisions in the sale of scrap generation at ₹81.03 crore and ₹57.97 crore respectively.
‘Changes in policy’
Chief Public Relations Officer, WR, Ravinder Bhakar said that a policy level change was made to ensure that scrap could be sold on a daily basis if required as opposed to the earlier system where auctions were conducted in fixed time frames.
In addition to the improving punctuality, WR has also increased the turnaround time of coaches. WR’s coach utilisation was the highest in Indian Railways with each coach clocking an average of 572 km per day. “We have improved efficiency in our systems and practices which has essentially helped us increase carrying capacity and punctuality across our zone. We would strive to improve these numbers in the 2019-20,” Mr. Bhakar said.
Another key highlight was the surge in mobile ticketing witnessed by WR in 2018-19. The UTS app was downloaded by 12.54 lakh commuters on WR, an increase of 197% over the previous financial year.
App gains popularity
Through the year, WR had initiated several drives to popularise the app and have even converted one booking window each at Andheri and Borivali to promote cashless and paperless ticketing.
