Addressing the ‘Smart Railways Conclave’, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said around 6,000 railway stations will be WiFi-enabled in the next 6-8 months.
Goyal said, “We believe that if we have to leverage digital technology, the basic ingredient is to ensure access to technology in the remotest part of the country.”
“The railways is working on a programme to ensure the last mile connectivity wherever we do not have fibre optics in our network. We are hopeful that in the next 6-to-8 months, all railway stations, other than the halt stations, about 6,000 stations will be WiFi-enabled,” he added.
He also said that between April and August 2018, the punctuality of trains has improved to 73-74% as railways replaced manual recording of time by station masters with data loggers placed at interchange points across the network.
“We are working on putting a GPS device on every locomotive so that we will have every train marked on mobile phone, knowing exactly where they are,” he said.
