In an endeavour to address the inadequacies of capacity constraints and improve its share in total freight ecosystem of the country, Indian Railways has come up with draft National Rail Plan.
A long-term strategic plan called the National Rail Plan has been developed to plan infrastructural capacity enhancement along with strategies to increase the modal share of the Railways, Indian Railways said in a release.
The National Rail Plan will be a common platform for all future infrastructural, business and financial planning of the Railways. This plan is being circulated among various ministries for their views now. Railways aim to finalise the final plan by January 2021.
Indian Railways stated that amongst one of the most important objectives of the plan is to create capacity ahead of demand by 2030, which in turn would cater to growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways from 27 per cent currently to 45 per cent in freight by 2030 as part of a national commitment to reduce carbon emission and to continue to sustain it.
Indian Railways plans to reduce the transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains from present 22 kmph to 50 kmph. It aims to reduce the overall cost of rail transportation by nearly 30 per cent and pass on the benefits to the customers.
As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as 100 per cent electrification, multi-tracking of congested routes, upgrading the speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes, upgrading speed to 130 kmph on all other golden quadilateral-golden diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and elimination of all level crossings on all GQ/GD routes.
Three Dedicated Freight Corridors have been envisioned namely East Coast, East-West and North-South identified along with timelines.
Several new High-Speed Rail Corridors have also been identified. Survey on Delhi-Varanasi High-Speed Rail is already underway.
The plan aims to assess locomotive requirement to meet twin objectives of 100 per cent electrification (Green Energy) by December 2023 and also the increasing traffic up to 2050.
Indian Railways stated that for successful implementation of the National Rail Plan, it will be looking to engage with the private sector, PSUs, state governments and original equipment manufacturers(OEM)/industries.
( With inputs from ANI )
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