To avoid crowding and inconvenience to passengers at platforms, the Indian Railways has introduced an app-based monitoring system for ensuring the escalators are functional and are repaired in a few minutes in case of an issue, officials familiar with the development said on Thursday.

The move comes after the national transporters’ internal survey revealed that at least 1.5 million yearly complaints were received for inoperative escalators alone.

The system has been implemented on a pilot basis at a few zones– Central, Western and Northern Railways.

“On average, at least ten daily complaints are received on issues with the escalators. It is not economical for us to depute an individual operator for each escalator and lift, hence we have come up with this app-based system,” a Central Railways official said.

Railway commuters face hardship when they find escalators not working. To overcome this difficulty, the Mumbai Division of Central Railway has adopted a web and mobile app-based monitoring system for escalators, a second official said, adding that through this, the operator has to focus only on non-working assets, which would also save manpower.

Stating the advantages of the monitoring system, an official from Northern Railways said, “Minute-to-minute digital record of every escalator is available after introducing this system. It also generates a warning, if the escalator is overdue for scheduled maintenance.”

He said that the system allows the higher authorities to review the performance with the help of access to the executive summary.

“It will also bring in a huge reduction in expenditure on contractual operators,” said the official.

A Western Railways official said that a birds-eye view on the dashboard is ideal for monitoring 100% escalators of the whole division by a controller sitting at the Centralised Control Room.

The system will display a red signal and voice alert when an escalator stops functioning.

“On maps at the stations, escalators are shown as per their geographical location, and they blink green or red as per their working/ non-working status. Moreover, audio and visual alarm makes it impossible for any alert message to escape the sight of a controller,” the official concluded.