45 ROBs sanctioned for Telangana this year: Railway Minister

Of the ₹550 cr. spent on ROBs so far, State share ₹400 cr.

November 21, 2019 05:35 am | Updated 05:35 am IST - HYDERABAD

Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply to a question that 45 Road Over Bridges (ROBs) at manned railway level crossings were sanctioned for Telangana this year on cost sharing basis.

The ROBs will replace the level crossings where traffic density is more than one lakh Train Vehicle Unit (TVU) subject to consent of State government for closure of the crossings and sharing of cost.

Mr. Goyal’s reply with national perspective said railways, normally, undertake construction of ROBs in railway portion whereas approaches are constructed by the State governments. Generally, there is no problem of construction of ROBs in railway portion but it is difficult to fix the time schedule as construction of bridges on approaches depends on many factors such as availability of land, removal of encroachments, fixing the alignment of approaches, allocation of requisite funds, besides others.

The level crossings were closed against road traffic for safe passage of trains or any other railway operations.

Sources in Roads and Buildings Department of the State government said there are 21 ROBs under construction while two more at Mancherial and Devarakadra are held up due to land acquisition issues.

Though the railways declare the work as cost sharing in 50:50 ratio, they end up 30:70 -- with the State government incurring the higher side of expenditure. This is because the work of railways is limited to 30 to 40 metres and construction of one span each on either side of the track within the railway land but a gamut of burden is outside this portion related to land acquisition, clearing encroachments, buildings and utilities like water, sanitary, power and telephone lines. There are also temple and court issues which delayed the process. Thus, the work of government extends to about 500 metres each on both sides of the track.

A major bottleneck in construction of ROBs is the demand of State governments to construct them in four lane mode keeping in view future traffic needs but the railways sanctions four lanes only where the traffic density at the level crossings is more than three lakh TVU per day.

The TVU is calculated on the basis of number of trains multiplied by number of vehicles crossing the spot.

Since only a double lane is sanctioned for traffic of over one lakh TVU, the State government in almost all the 21 ongoing projects took up four laning of ROBs and ended up spending nearly 75% of the cost. Of the ₹ 550 crore spent on ROBs so far, the government’s share was ₹ 400 crore. The work of ROBs was speeded up as six of them were completed this year against four since the formation of Telangana.

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