master blaster - MP .Sachin sir railway question
criteria for declaring suburban railway services as a separate zone
784 . Shri Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar
(a) the rationale behind creating a new zone for Kolkata Metro and whether it can be replicated in other cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi that also have similar suburban rail services;
(b)...
more... the criteria that a suburban railway system must fulfil to enable it to be notified as a separate zone; and
(c) whether the above three cities fulfil that criteria and are eligible for being notified as separate zones?
ANSWER
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI MANOJ SINHA)
(a) to (c): Metro Railway, Kolkata is a one-of-a-kind stand-alone system on Indian Railways (IR) which operates only Metro services. After taking this into consideration along with operational, administrative and other factors, the zonal railway status was granted to Metro Railway, Kolkata to, inter-alia, help this organization in its operations and in further expansion.
In the Indian Railway system operational in other cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, the suburban railway traffic is run along with the mainline traffic, i.e. unified operation of all types of trains takes place on the same infrastructure viz. track, bridges, signalling, Over Head Equipment (OHE), etc. Creation of exclusive zones for suburban systems, operated by Indian Railways, in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai is not envisaged as segregation of suburban, non-suburban, freight traffic, etc. is not possible in these cities.
