New Delhi: Indian Railways is all set to bring its National Rail Plan 2030 which targets to improve the transporter's revenue, complete its developmental projects and provide better facilities to the passengers. Indian Railways, on Friday, released the final draft of the plan for public consultation.
It will also be sent to all the stakeholders and various ministries for feedback. While addressing the media, Chairman Railway Board Vinod Kumar Yadav said Indian Railways is aiming to develop capacity beyond demand through the plan.
Under the National Rail Plan 2030, Indian Railways targets to provide confirmed train tickets to all passengers for which demand assessment is held at over 100 representative locations. Currently, passenger seat confirmation is handled by IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.
Aiming to increase the freight revenue, the Railways is targeting to contribute 47 percent of total freight movement in the country by 2030, which is currently at 27 percent. Under Vision 2024, which is also a part of the National Rail Plan, the Indian Railways has prepared a blueprint to augment infrastructure to enable loading of 2024 MT by 2024.
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"We have already tied up the funding for all these projects and allocated the funds for different projects till March 2024. Vision 2024 is a subset of National Rail Plan, where we have issued a document indicating the list of all projects which will be completed in 2024 and will give us the result that we will be able to take our freight loading to 2024 MT," said the Railway official.
The three Dedicated Freight Corridor, including the East Coast DFC, East-West DFC, and North-South DFC, will be developed under Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. These projects will increase the transit time of freight substantially by increasing the average speed of freight trains from present 22 kmph to 50 kmph.
On the routes of New Delhi and Howrah and New Delhi and Mumbai, cruising speed of trains will be increased to 160 kmph by 2024. While on Golden Quadrilateral and Golden Diagonals, the speed will be raised to 130 kmph.
"Through this, we anticipate that by March 2024, we will be having enough capacity in the Railway network to take freight loading to 2024 MT and also to provide passenger trains wherever feasible and wherever possible," VK Yadav said.
In addition to this, Railways has also set up a target for Net Zero Carbon Emission by 2030. As per the plan, the total capital expenditure which is envisaged for this Vision 2024 is Rs 2.9 lakh crores.
