Indian Railways (IR) has finalised its draft National Rail Plan (NRP) according to V K Yadav, Chairman & CEO Railway Board.
The draft plan aims to increase the share of freight that IR has among all competing modes of transport from the existing 27 per cent to 45 per cent.
The plan endeavours to address the inadequacies of capacity constraints that IR is currently grappling with besides outlining the strategies to improve IR’s modal share in total freight eco system to 45 per cent.
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The NRP will be a common platform for all future infrastructural, business and financial planning of IR and is being circulated among various ministries for their views. IR plans to finalise the final plan by January 2021, after responses from every concerned stakeholder.
The salient features of the plan are:
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- To create capacity ahead of demand by 2030, which in turn would cater to growth in demand right up to 2050.
- Increase the modal share of Railways from 27 per cent currently to 45 per cent in freight by 2030
- To reduce carbon emission, sustain the reduction and attain to continue to sustain it. net zero carbon emission by 2030.
- To assess the actual demand in freight and passenger sectors, a yearlong survey was conducted over hundred representative locations by survey teams spread all over the country.
- Forecast growth of traffic in both freight and passenger year on year up to 2030 and on a decadal basis up to 2050.
- Formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight to 45 per cent by 2030.
- Reduce transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains from present 22Kmph to 50Kmph.
- Reduce overall cost of rail transportation by nearly 30 per cent and pass on the benefits to the customers.
- Map the growth in demand on the Indian Railway route map and simulate the capacity behaviour of the network in future.
- Based on above simulation identify infrastructural bottlenecks that would arise in future with growth in demand.
- Select projects along with appropriate technology in both track work, signalling and rolling stock to mitigate these bottlenecks well in advance.
Vision 2024
IR has launched Vision 2024 as part of the NRP. This has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as
- 100 per cent electrification,
- multitracking of congested routes,
- upgradation of speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes,
- upgradation of speed to 130kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and
- elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route.
Future Projects
IR has identified future projects for implementation beyond 2024. These include projects related to both track and signalling. Clear cut timelines have also been drwn for these projects.
• Three Dedicated Freight Corridors, namely East Coast, East-West & North-South have been identified along with timelines. Preliminary Engineering and Traffic Survey (PETS) already underway.
• Several new High Speed Rail Corridors have also been identified. Survey on Delhi-Varanasi High Speed Rail already under way.
• Rolling Stock requirement for passenger traffic as well as wagon requirement for freight is also being estimated
• Also being assayed is the requirement for locomotives taking into account the twin objectives of 100 per cent electrification (Green Energy) by December 2023 and also the increasing traffic right up to 2030 and beyond up to 2050.
• Total capital required for investment in these projects with a periodical break up besides identification of new streams of finance, models for financing including those based on public-private partnership (PPP) are assayed.
• IR is looking to engage with Private Sector, PSUs, State Governments and Original Equipment Manufacturers(OEM)/Industries for NRP.
• The private sector is being considered mainly for areas such as operations, ownership of rolling stock, development of freight and passenger terminals, besides development/operations of track infrastructure.
IR plans to generate enough revenue surplus 2030 to fund its capex beyond 2030 besides taking on the burden of servicing debt that has already been raised. In sum, IR expects that exchequer funding of rail projects would not be required post-2030.
