INDIA TRAIN ACCIDENT 2023

According to reports, more than 280 people were killed and over 1,000 were wounded in a three-vehicle disaster involving two passenger trains and a freight train in eastern Odisha state on Friday.

While officials continue to count dead and seek survivors, investigators will likely look into how much the country's old railway infrastructure had a role in the tragedy.

Under British colonial authority, India's massive rail network, one of the greatest in the world, was established more than 160 years ago. Today, it operates over 11,000 trains each day across 67,000 miles of track across the world's most populated country.

Authorities have launched a "high-level inquiry" to ascertain what caused the incident, however, a senior state railway official told CNN that a traffic signaling malfunction was suspected.

According to the official, the Coromandel Express was going from Shalimar to Chennai when it collided with a freight train, derailing many coaches over the other track. The Howrah Express, moving in the opposite direction as Yesvantpur, collided with the upturned carriages at great speed.

A signaling failure might occur owing to a technological problem or human mistake, since traffic lights are often controlled by staff at each station, according to a station supervisor in Odisha.

In India, deteriorating infrastructure is often blamed for traffic delays and several railway accidents. Despite official figures indicating that accidents and derailments have been on the decrease in recent years, they remain tragically prevalent.

In 2021, almost 18,000 train accidents killed over 16,000 individuals throughout the nation. According to the National Crime Records, the majority of railway accidents (67.7%) were caused by train collapses and collisions with persons on the track. Train-on-train collisions are rare.

Improving India's transportation infrastructure is a top aim for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he strives to build a $5 trillion economy by 2025. Modi's administration increased capital investment in airports, road and highway development, and other infrastructure projects to $122 billion, or 1.7% of GDP, for the fiscal year that began in April.

A major amount of the money will go toward adding additional high-speed trains to its infamously sluggish lines. According to Albright Stonebridge Group, a corporate planning consultancy, India's 2018 budget contains a $29 billion provision for railway expansion.

An ambitious National train Plan, launched in 2021, envisions high-speed trains connecting all major cities in north, west, and south India. Cities with populations of at least one million that are between 300 and 700 kilometers apart are being selected.

India has hired Japanese technology, engineers, and financing to help build its first line, a 508-kilometer connection between Mumbai and Ahmedabad in western India. If all plans are implemented, an additional 12 routes might benefit from high-speed connections in the future decades.

Several large projects were been completed or are nearing completion, including the building of the world's highest railway bridge in Jammu & Kashmir. Before the catastrophe, Modi was scheduled to launch a new high-speed train, the Vande Bharat Express.

While the government is modernizing trains, tracks, and stations with new technology to avoid deadly collisions, a former railway minister claimed one of the trains involved in Friday's disaster did not have an anti-collision mechanism on board.

"As far as I know, there was no anti-collision device on the train." This would not have occurred if the gadget had been aboard the train," Mamata Banerjee told reporters on Saturday.

Several such fatal railway accidents have occurred in India in recent decades.

In 2005, a passenger train derailed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh as it attempted to cross tracks washed away by a flood. At least 102 persons were killed. Six years later, a train jumped rails in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, killing dozens.

The death toll from Friday's catastrophe has already eclipsed that of a previous catastrophic tragedy in 2016 when more than 140 people were killed in a train derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state. The next year, Modi planned massive improvements in India's railway infrastructure to improve safety and connection.