Steps Being Taken to Increase Speed of Trains, No Proposal to Privatise Railways: Piyush Goyal to Parliament

Increase in speed of Trains

The Railways is undertaking measures for improving speed of both passenger and freight trains. Improvement in average speed of trains is a continuous exercise for Railways. Indian Railway is constructing more than 3000 Km of Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), which would enable freight trains to run at speed of 100 kmph. Further, the Government in August 2019, has approved two projects for raising of speed to 160 kmph on existing New Delhi-Mumbai (including Vadodara-Ahmedabad) and New Delhi- Howrah (including Kanpur-Lucknow) routes. These routes are part of Golden Quadrilateral and Diagonals of Indian Railways, which consist of 16% of Indian Railways network, yet carry 52% of total passenger traffic and 58% of total freight traffic carried by Indian Railways.

1318 Km of Eastern DFC, 1504 Km of Western DFC and the two projects of raising of speed of New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Howrah routes shall be completed within the next five year period.

Privatisation of Railways

There is no proposal to privatise the operations of Railways. However, there is a proposal to outsource the commercial and on board services of a few trains and to permit private players to induct modern rakes to run trains on select routes with an objective to provide improved service delivery to passengers. The responsibility of train operations and safety certification rests with Indian Railways. Outsourcing of certain services like station cleaning, pay and use toilets, retiring rooms, parking and platforms maintenance etc. is being done on need based manner to improve cleanliness and other services.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

Rail Connectivity to Buddhist Pilgrimage Centres

 The following works of New Lines have been included in Budget and are in different stages of execution to connect Buddhist Pilgrimage Centres:

1. Gaya-Bodhgaya-Chatra, Gaya-Natesar(Nalanda)
2. Rajgir-Hisua-Tilaiya, Natesar-Islampur
3. Kapilvastu-Basti
4. Bahraich-Shravasti-Balrampur/Tulsipur
5. Padrauna-Kushinagar via Gorakhpur

This information was given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.