FOCUS SYSTEM
Safety and Security in Metro Rail Projects Abstract Indian Railways (IR) owns and manages one of the world’s largest Railway networks with over 64,000 Route Kilometers (Km) and over 7,000 stations. Operations of the Indian Railways are monitored and overseen by the Ministry of Railways (MOR), Government of India and 16 Zonal Railways headed by General Managers. The IR carries more than 17.5 million passengers every day, and some of the major Railway stations handle 100200 million passengers per annum.
Almost all the railway stations are located in the middle of the cities under IR, which offers enormous potential for redevelopment and commercial expansion with passengers’ travel option in an enormous volume. New passenger terminals are also being developed in cities where existing terminals cannot meet future demand. Metro Rail Services – An Introduction There exist nearly 200 operational metro rail systems (MRS) worldwide. The International Association of Public Transport defines an MRS as an urban electric transport system with high capacity and service frequency. Also, an MRS is independent of
https://www.metrorailnews.in
other traffic, road or pedestrian. According to the World Metro Database, more than 150 MRS are either at the planning stage or already under construction across the globe. In particular, like China and India, emerging economies are rapidly building urban metro rail systems in their growing cities to decongest road traffic and provide more environmentally friendly means of transport to their communities. A recent study by the Association of the European Rail Industry found that the global market for metro rail infrastructure
and equipment has been growing at a rate of 3.2% per year through the global downturn (2008–2010), and is set to continue its growth at a rate of about 2.7% per year until 2017 and around 2.5% annually till 2025, especially in 3rd world or underdeveloped and developing economies. In the design of a metro system, the emphasis is placed upon facilitating the movement of passengers. Owing to their functionality, metro rail projects were conceived as ‘open architecture’ systems, and little attention was paid to security. Past incidents have shown that MRS provide suitable environments to passengers and offenders, such as pickpockets and sexual offenders. However, one of the major concerns is that Metros are notorious target sites for terrorists seeking to
METRO RAIL NEWS | March 2021
41
