INDIA: Following Minster of Railways Suresh Prabhu’s budget speech in February which set out plans for the creation of ‘cross-functional’ directorates, the Ministry of Railways has announced plans to form a Mobility Directorate at the Rail Bhawan headquarters in New Delhi.
The new directorate’s focus would be on identifying and prioritising corridors where speeds can be raised, pathing timetabled freight trains, eliminating bottlenecks, monitoring the progress of capacity enhancement works, and tackling speed restrictions, asset failures and rolling stock issues which affect service speeds.
Working directly under the supervision of the Chairman of the Railway Board, the directorate would be headed by a higher administrative grade officer from the traffic department, assisted by executive director and director rank officers from the engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and S&T departments.
