Tracks vulnerability leads to derailment incidents

LAHORE: The derailment of Jaffer Express that claimed 15 lives adds to the increasing derailment incidents every passing year while the track’s vulnerability to terrorist’s activity is another domain yet to be addressed through technological measures by Pakistan Railways.
The importance of a safe, uninterruptible and non-vulnerable Railway System is crucial to the sustainability of the Pak-China Economic Corridor. According to Pakistan Railways own data, in the year 2012, the total derailment incidents were 13 including nine derailments of passenger trains, and four of Goods Trains. In comparison to 13 in 2012, 22 incidents of derailment happened in 2013 including 13 derailments of passenger trains and nine derailments of goods trains.
While some of these derailments have been attributed to deteriorating railways infrastructure, a majority had been in one way or the other associated with probable acts of terrorism. Over the last 15 years the number of incidents due to terrorist activity has been on the rise as well.
According to ‘South Asian Terrorism Portal’ from the year 2000 to 2010 the total terrorist attacks on Pakistan Railways were 15 in which total 20 people were killed while around 50 were injured. However, in the past five years from 2010 till 2015, 112 terrorist attacks were carried out which led to 68 deaths, and 400 were injured.
There are two easy ways to derail a train through miscreant activity. The first is to remove the spikes that keep the track in place. The inquiry committee that investigated the Gujranwala Army Train found a similar scenario, however the incident was not attributed to terrorism.
The second way to derail a train is to leave something on the tracks. On 12th February 2015, at least 25 people were wounded after a remote controlled explosion on railway track derailed Khushhal Khan Khattak Express near the Dilmurad Railway Station in Jacobabad district. The object that caused the derailment was not identified, but considering the age of the suspects, it’s probably not complex or difficult to duplicate. On 1st November 2015, at least three people were killed and 12 others were injured when an IED exploded near a railway track in Dasht area of Mastung district in Balochistan.
There is no silver bullet for protecting train tracks, but there are options. The first is track-tampering-detection systems. Fiber optic cables can be wound into the tracks so that any removal of a bolt or fishplate can be detected. In 2011, even the American passenger railroad service Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that Amtrak doesn’t have the money to invest in such a system.
The Pakistan Railways Chief Executive Officer Javed Anwar Bubak, too, held a similar stance, saying that installing such a system would be one giant investment considering 11,778 kilometers of Railtrack in the country. He, however, said considering the heightened importance of the railways especially in the context of the Pak-China Economic Corridor, many technological interventions are being considered by the government in this regard, and all the options are being exhaustively debated at high level meetings. However, none has been finalized yet.
The cost of such systems across entire track lines is daunting, but some researchers see smarter ways. A trio of engineers from India in 2011 created a cognitive wireless sensor network that uses “cost effective and flexible piezoresistive pressure sensors which show large changes in resistances as soon as the nuts and bolts of the fishplates are loosened.”
A smart security solution may be to focus on the likely spots that terrorists would target when they tamper with the tracks. “We’re most concerned with the possibility of an external attack on a train at a vulnerable point, whether that be a bridge or a tunnel,” Boardman said in 2011. If sensors and security cameras could be set up at places that were deemed most likely for a derailment, such as a bridge, the cost of the protection would drop significantly, as opposed to trying to protect all the tracks. Local police can also make monitoring these crucial points a priority in their jurisdictions.
But the best kind of protection against railroad terrorism might just be public awareness. Local police and citizens can keep an eye out for strange activity on the tracks, because most attacks would require the perpetrators to scout the location, as the would-be attackers did in Canada.