Indian Railways’ Ro-Ro (Roll-on Roll-off) services have temporarily come to a halt for “technical reasons”, after a much-hyped launch in March this year. The Ro-Ro services were part of a “Green Project” of the Indian Railways, aimed at carrying non-Delhi bound heavy commercial vehicles in a flat railway wagon out of the national capital, without having to enter the city. Trucks would be loaded from the Ghari Harasuru station in Gurgaon and offloaded at the Muradnagar station in Uttar Pradesh, bypassing Delhi, thus saving on fuel for the transporter and Delhi from guzzling diesel pollution. The Ro-Ro services were launched by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu to reduce Delhi’s air pollution and bring some respite to traffic on the city’s roads, but the services had to be called off within days of the launch. According to senior officials in the Northern Railways, the main reason that brought the Ro-Ro services to a halt was the low height of the Overhead Electrification (OHE) wires in Delhi, due to which bigger trucks were not being able to be loaded on railway wagons.Some railway officials also termed the launch of the services in Delhi as “poorly thought out” and “unprepared”. On the condition of anonymity, a Railway official told this correspondent, “This service was launched in haste without doing homework. The OHE wires are quite low in Delhi and made it difficult for bigger trucks to be loaded. Also, at many places on the railway lines, there are foot over-bridges with low height, which again made it difficult to load heavy trucks; therefore, the services had to be called off.”
The official further added that even transporters did not show much enthusiasm in this project. “The transporters also failed to support the Railways. After two or three days of the project’s launch, hardly any bookings were made. The lack of demand posed a challenge before the Railways,” the official said.
Neeraj Sharma, Northern Railways’ Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO), told The Sunday Guardian, “The project was launched as a pilot one, but the services have been temporarily stopped due to operational difficulties and the DRM (Divisional Railway Manager) Delhi Division has already sent a detailed report to the board for further considerations and services would start after modifications.”
Railways had introduced four Ro-Ro trains into service to transport 500 odd trucks out of Delhi. The trucks otherwise use Delhi roads for transit.
Railways had plans to increase the number of trains based on the response it received.
Delhi’s roads see about 66,000 diesel guzzling trucks on a daily basis, out of which around 25,000 trucks use Delhi roads as their transit points to move to other states, further polluting the city, which is already grappling with bad air.